“It isn’t Shalott, Katie. There is no Shalott, and there never was. Even if it is – which it isn’t – it’s situated slap bang in the middle of the proposed route for the Woolston relief road, which is already three-and-a-half years late and six-point-nine million pounds over budget. Which means that the county council will have to rethink their entire highways-building plan, and we won’t get paid until the whole mess has gone through a full-scale public enquiry, which probably means in fifteen years’ time.”
“But think of it!” said Katie. “There – where Nigel’s digging – that could be the island where the castle used to stand, where the Lady of Shalott weaved her tapestries. And these were the fields where the reapers heard her singing! And that ditch was the river, where she floated down to Camelot in her boat, singing her last lament before she died!”
“If any of that is true, sweetheart, then this is the hill where you and I and Historic Site Assessment Plc went instantly bankrupt.”
“But we’d be famous, wouldn’t we?”
“No, we wouldn’t. You don’t think for one moment that we’d be allowed to dig it up, do you? Every medieval archeologist from every university in the western hemisphere would be crawling all over this site like bluebottles over a dead hedgehog.”
“We’re perfectly well qualified.”
“No, darling, we’re not, and I think you’re forgetting what we do. We don’t get paid to find sites of outstanding archeological significance interest, we get paid not to find them. Bronze Age buckle? Shove it in your pocket and rediscover it five miles away, well away from the proposed new supermarket site. An Iron Age sheep pen, fine. We can call in aJCB and have it shifted to the Ancient Britain display at Frome. But not Shalott, Katie. Shalott would bloody sink us.”
They struggled down the hill and across the meadow. The rain began to ease off, but the wind was still blustery. As they clambered down the ditch, and up the other side, Nigel stood up and took off his helmet. He was very tall, Nigel, with tight curly hair, a large complicated nose, and a hesitant, disconnected way of walking and talking. But Mark hadn’t employed him for his looks or his physical co-ordination or his people skills. He had employed him because of his MA Hist and his Dip Arch & Landscape, which were prominently displayed on the top of the company notepaper.
“Nigel! How’s it going? Katie tells me you’ve found Shalott.”
“Well – no – Mark! I don’tlike to jump to – you know – hah! – hasty conclusions! Not when we could be dealing with – pff! I don’t know! – the most exciting archeological find ever! But these stones, look!”
Mark turned to Katie and rolled up his eyes in exaggerated weariness. But Katie said, “Go on, Mark. Look.”
Nigel was circling around the rough grassy tussocks, flapping his hands. “I’ve cut back some of the turf, d’you see – and – underneath – well, see?” He had already exposed six or seven rectangular stones, the color of well-matured Cheddar cheese. Every stone bore a dense pattern of chisel-marks, as if it had been gnawed by a giant stone-eating rat.
“Bath stone,” said Nigel. “Quarried from Hazlebury most likely, and look at that jadding . . . late thirteenth century, in my humble opinion. Certainly not cut by the old method.”
Mark peered at the stones and couldn’t really see anything but stones. “The old method?”
Nigel let out a honk of laughter. “Silly, isn’t it? The old method is what quarrymen used to call the new method – cutting the stone with saws, instead of breaking it away with bars.”
“What wags they were. But what makes you think this could be Shalott?”
Nigel shielded his eyes with his hand and looked around the meadow, blinking. “The location suggests it, more than anything else. You can see by the way these foundation-stones are arranged that there was certainly a tower here. You don’t use stones five feet thick to build a single-story pigsty, do you? But then you have to ask yourself why would you build a tower here?”
“Do you? Oh yes, I suppose you do.”
“You wouldn’t have picked the middle of a valley to build a fort,” said Nigel. “You would only build a tower here as a folly, or to keep somebody imprisoned, perhaps.”
“Like the Lady of Shalott?”
“Well, exactly.”
“So, if there was a tower here, where’s the rest of it?”
“Oh, pilfered, most likely. As soon its owners left it empty, most of the stones would have been carried off by local smallholders, for building walls and stables and farmhouses. I’ll bet you could still find them if you went looking for them.”
“Well, I’ll betyou could,” said Mark, blowing his nose. “Pity they didn’t take the lot.”
Nigel blinked at him through rain-speckled glasses. “If they’d done that, hah! we never would have known that this was Shalott, would we?”
“Precisely.”
Nigel said, “I don’t think the tower was standing here for very long. At a very rough estimate it was built just before 1275, and most likely abandoned during the Black Death, around 1340.”
“Oh, yes?” Mark was already trying to work out what equipment they were going to need to shift these stones and where they could dump them. Back at Hazelbury quarry, maybe, where they originally came from. Nobody would ever find them there. Or maybe they could sell them as garden benches. He had a friend in Chelsea who ran a profitable sideline in ancient stones and 18th century garden ornaments, for wealthy customers who weren’t too fussy where they came from.
Nigel took hold of Mark’s sleeve and pointed to a stone that was still half-buried in grass. There were some deep marks chiseled into it. “Look-you can just make out a cross, and part of a skull, and the letters DSPM. That’s an acronym for medieval Latin, meaning ‘God save us from the pestilence within these walls.’”
“So whoever lived in this tower was infected with the Black Death?”
“That’s the most obvious assumption, yes.”
Mark nodded. “Okay, then . . .” he said, and kept on nodding.
“This is very, very exciting,” said Nigel. “I mean, it’s – well! – it could be stupefying, when you come to think of it!”
“Yes,” said Mark. He looked around the site, still nodding. “Katie told me you’d found some metal thing.”
“Well! Hah! That’s the clincher, so far as I’m concerned! At least it will be, if it turns out to be what I think it is!”
He strode back to the place where he had been digging, and Mark reluctantly followed him. Barely visible in the mud was a length of blackened metal, about a metre-and-a-half long and curved at both ends.
“It’s a fireguard, isn’t it?” said Mark. Nigel had cleaned a part of it, and he could see that there were flowers embossed on it, and bunches of grapes, and vine-tendrils. In the center of it was a lump that looked like a human face, although it was so encrusted with mud that it was impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman.
Mark peered at it closely. “An old Victorian fireguard, that’s all.”
“I don’t think so,” said Nigel. “I think it’s the top edge of a mirror. And a thirteenth century mirror, at that.”
“Nigel . . . a mirror, as big as that, in 1275? They didn’t have glass mirrors in those days, remember. This would have to be solid silver, or silver-plated, at least.”