The Crossing Places

'Come on,' says Erik, 'let's see if we can find that causeway of yours.'

They set off, walking inland across the dunes. A couple of waders are feeding on the mudflats. Ruth thinks of David's description of the Saltmarsh as nature's service station. The birds look up as they pass and then continue their frenzied digging. In the distance, a heron watches them, standing meditatively on one leg.

Ruth has David's map, showing the buried posts.

Silently she unfurls it and hands it to Erik. He makes a hissing noise of satisfaction, 'So… Now we have it.' He examines the map for a long time in silence. Ruth watches him with admiration. No-one is better at reading a map or a landscape than Erik. For him, hills and streams and villages are signposts pointing directly to the past. She remembers him saying to her when she first started his postgraduate course, 'If you wanted to make a map of your sitting room for archaeologists of the future, what would be the most important thing?'

'Er… making sure I have a full inventory of objects.'

He had laughed. 'No, no. Inventories are all very well in their place but they do not tell us how people lived, what was important to them, what they worshipped. No, the most important thing would be the direction. The way your chairs were facing. That would show archaeologists of the future that the most important object in the twenty first century home was the large grey rectangle in the corner.'

Now Erik looks up from the map, sniffs the air and smiles. 'This way, I think.' They set off at a brisk walk. The wind is behind them now, blowing the coarse grass flat against the ground. They pass the tidal reed beds, the shallow water dark and mysterious. Above them a bird calls, hoarse and angry.

'Here.' Erik stops and bends down. Ruth squats beside him. There, half-buried in the peaty ground between the reeds and the mudflats., is a post. It extends about ten centimetres above the soil.

'Bog oak,' says Erik. Ruth looks more closely. The wood is dark, almost black, its surface dotted with little holes, like woodworm.

'Molluscs,' says Erik laconically, 'they eat away at the wood.'

'How old is it?' asks Ruth.

'Don't know for sure. But it looks old.'

'As old as the henge?'

'Possibly later.'

Ruth reaches out to touch the post. It feels soft, like black toffee. She has to resist the temptation to gouge in her fingernail.

'Come on,' says Erik. 'Let's find the next one.'

The next post is about two metres away. This one is harder to see, almost submerged by water. Erik paces between the posts.

'Incredible. The land between the two is completely dry, although it's marshland on either side. It must be a shingle spit, incredible that it hasn't moved over the years.'

Ruth can sense his excitement. 'So it could be a pathway through the marsh?'

'Yes, a crossing place. It was as important as marking a boundary, marking a crossing place over sacred ground.

One step the wrong way and you're dead, straight to hell.

Keep on the path and it will lead you to heaven.'

He is smiling but Ruth shivers, remembering the letters. Look to the sky, the stars, the crossing places. Look at what is silhouetted against the sky. You will find her where the earth meets the sky. Did the letter writer know about the pathway? He spoke about causeways and cursuses.

Had he brought Lucy here, to this desolate landscape?

They find a total of twelve posts, leading them back almost to the car park and the place where Ruth found the Iron Age body. Erik takes pictures and makes notes. He seems completely absorbed. Ruth finds herself feeling restless, abstracted. With Nelson, she had been the expert.

Now she feels relegated to the position of student.

'How will you get the wood dated?' she asks.

'I'll ask Bob Bullmore.' Bob is a member of Ruth's department, an experienced forensic anthropologist, an expert on the decomposition of flora and fauna. Ruth likes Bob; involving him is a good idea but, again, she has the sensation of being sidelined. This was my discovery, she wants to yell, you wouldn't be here if it wasn't for me.

Aloud she says, 'Shall we tell Phil?'

'Not yet.'

'Bob might tell him.'

'Not if I ask him not to.'

'Do you think we have found a link between my Iron Age body and the henge?'

Erik looks at her quizzically. 'Your Iron Age body?'

'I found it,' says Ruth defiantly.

'We own nothing in this life,' says Erik.

'You sound like Cathbad.'

Erik looks at her for a minute, consideringly, like a lecturer assessing a new student. Then he says, 'Come and meet him.'

'Who?'

'Cathbad. Come and meet him properly.'

'Now?'

'Yes. I thought I'd look him up.'

Ruth hesitates. Part of her, the amateur detective part, wants to see Cathbad again, to assess him without Nelson's sceptical presence clouding her judgement. But she is still slightly angry with Erik for not telling her that he had been Cathbad's tutor. She considers, stuck in a liminal zone of her own between curiosity and resentment.

As she is thinking, watched quizzically by Erik, her phone rings, the noise sounding shockingly twenty-first century.

'Excuse me.' Ruth turns away.

'Ruth. It's Nelson.'

'Oh… hello.'

'Are you busy? Can you come to Spenwell? Now'

'Why?'

'I'm at Scarlet Henderson's house. We've found some human bones in the garden.'

CHAPTER 12

Spenwell is a tiny village, hardly worthy of the name. One street of houses, a phone box and a shop that is only open for two hours in the afternoon. Scarlet's family live in a big modern bungalow built of ugly brown brick slightly redeemed by ivy. Ruth parks behind Nelson's Mercedes and two police vans. The police presence has not gone unnoticed in the small community. A group of children watch, wide-eyed, from the other side of the road, and up and down the street faces appear in windows. Their expressions are hard to read: curious, frightened, gleeful.

As Ruth approaches, Nelson appears around the side of the house. The front garden has been reduced to mud by police boots. Someone has put down planks, presumably for a wheelbarrow.

'Ruth,' Nelson greets her, 'how are you this morning?'

Ruth feels slightly embarrassed. Today she is the professional, the expert once more, she doesn't want to be reminded that last night she was sobbing over a dead cat.

'Better,' she says. 'Erik… you know, my ex-tutor, he came round after you left.'

Nelson looks at her slightly quizzically. But all he says is, 'Good.'

'Where are the bones?' asks Ruth. She wants to bring the conversation back to business.

'Round the back. The dogs found the place.'

The back garden is long and untidy, littered with old sofas, broken bicycles and a half-constructed climbing frame built, it appears, out of reclaimed timber. The sceneof-crime officers, clad in white jumpsuits, are clustered round a large hole. The sniffer dogs are straining at their leads, tails wagging madly. With a shock, Ruth realises that the Hendersons are here too. Scarlet's father and mother, standing silently by the back door. The mother is youngish, pale and pretty with long dark hair and a waifish look. She is wearing a purple velvet skirt and is barefoot, despite the cold. The father is older and has a slightly rat-like face, thin with watery eyes. In the garden three of their children are playing on the half-finished climbing frame, apparently unconcerned.

'This is Doctor Ruth Galloway,' says Nelson to one of the jumpsuited men. 'She's an expert on buried bones.'

Like a dog, thinks Ruth.

Ruth looks at the hole, which seems to run along the dividing line between the Hendersons' garden and the garden next door. Nearer the house, there is a timber fence but, here, at the end of the garden, there is only flint and rubble. A boundary, thinks Ruth. She hears Erik's voice in her head. It marked a boundary. We should have respected that.