“Exactly!” said Nigel. “A solid silver mirror – five feet across.”
“That’s practically unheard of.”
“Not if The Lady of Shalott was true. She had a mirror, didn’t she, not for looking at herself, but for looking at the world outside, so that she could weave a tapestry of life in Camelot, without having to look at it directly!
“‘There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colors gay.
She has heard a whisper say
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
“But moving through a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear . . .’”
Katie joined in.
“And in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror’s magic sights
For often thro’ the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot.”
“Top of the class,” said Mark. “Now, how long do you think it’s going to take to dig this out?”
“Oh . . . several weeks,” said Nigel. “Months, even.”
“I hope that’s one of your University of Essex jokes.”
“No, well, it has to be excavated properly. We don’t want to damage it, do we? And there could well be other valuable artifacts hidden in the soil all around it. Combs, buttons, necklaces, who knows? We need to fence this area off, don’t we, and inform the police, and the British Museum?”
Mark said, “No, Nigel, we don’t.”
Nigel slowly stood up, blinking with perplexity. “Mark – we have to! This tower, this mirror – they could change the entire concept of Arthurian legend! They’re archeological proof that the Lady of Shalott wasn’t just a story, and that Camelot was really here!”
“Nigel, that’s a wonderful notion, but it’s not going to pay off our overdraft, is it?”
Katie said, “I don’t understand. If this is the Lady of Shalott’s mirror, and it’s genuine, it could be worth millions!”
“It could, yes. But not to us. Treasure trove belongs to HM Government. Not only that, this isn’t our land, and we’re working under contract for the county council. So our chances of getting a share of it are just about zero.”
“So what are you suggesting?” said Nigel. “You want us to bury it again, and forget we ever found it? We can’t do that!”
“Oh, no,” Mark told him, “I’m not suggesting that for a moment.” He pointed to the perforated vines in the top of the frame. “We could run a couple of chains through here, though, couldn’t we, and use the Range Rover to pull it out?”
“What? That could cause irreparable damage!”
“Nigel – everything that happens in this world causes irreparable damage. That’s the whole definition of history.”
The rain had stopped completely now and Katie pushed back her hood. “I hate to say it, Mark, but I think you’re right. We found this tower, we found this mirror. If we report it, we’ll get nothing at all. No money, no credit. Not even a mention in the papers.”
Nigel stood over the metal frame for a long time, his hand thoughtfully covering the lower part of his face.
“Well?” Mark asked him, at last. It was already growing dark, and a chilly mist was rising between the knobbly-topped willow-trees.
“All right, then, bugger it,” said Nigel. “Let’s pull the bugger out.”
Mark drove the Range Rover down the hill and jostled along the banks of the ditch until he reached the island of Shalott. He switched on all the floodlights, front and rear, and then he and Nigel fastened towing-chains to the metal frame, wrapping them in torn T-shirts to protect the mouldings as much as they could. Mark slowly revved the Range Rover forward, its tires spinning in the fibrous brown mud. Nigel screamed, “Steady! Steady!” like a panicky hockey-mistress.
At first the metal frame wouldn’t move, but Mark tried pulling it, and then easing off the throttle, and then pulling it again. Gradually, it began to emerge from the peaty soil which covered it, and even before it was halfway out, he could see that Nigel was right, and that it was a mirror – or a large sheet of metal, anyway. He pulled it completely free, and Nigel screamed, “Stop!”
They hunkered down beside it and shone their flashlights on it. The decorative vine-tendrils had been badly bent by the towing-chains, but there was no other obvious damage. The surface of the mirror was black and mottled, like a serious bruise, but otherwise it seemed to have survived its seven hundred years with very little corrosion. It was over an inch thick and it was so heavy that they could barely lift it.
“What do we do now?” asked Katie.
“We take it back to the house, we clean it up, and we try to check out its provenance – where it was made, who made it, and what its history was. We have it assayed. Then we talk to one or two dealers who are interested in this kind of thing, and see how much we can get for it.”
“And what about Shalott?” asked Nigel. In the upward beam of his flashlight, his face had become a theatrical mask.
“You can finish off your survey, Nigel. I think you ought to. But give me two versions. One for the county council, and one for posterity. As soon as you’re done, I’ll arrange for somebody to take all the stones away, and store them. Don’t worry. You’ll be able to publish your story in five or ten years’ time, and you’ll probably make a fortune out of it.”
“But the island – it’s all going to be lost.”
“That’s the story of Britain, Nigel. Nothing you can do can change it.”
They heaved the mirror into the back of the Range Rover and drove back into Wincanton. Mark had rented a small end-of-terrace house on the outskirts, because it was much cheaper than staying in a hotel for seven weeks. The house was plain, flat-fronted, with a scrubby front garden and a dilapidated wooden garage. In the back garden stood a single naked cherry-tree. Inside, the ground-level rooms had been knocked together to make a living-room with a dining area at one end. The carpet was yellow with green Paisley swirls on it, and the furniture was reproduction, all chintz and dark varnish.
Between them, grunting, they maneuvered the mirror into the living-room and propped it against the wall. Katie folded up two bath-towels and they wedged it underneath the frame to stop it from marking the carpet.
“I feel like a criminal,” said Nigel.
Mark lit the gas fire and briskly chafed his hands. “You shouldn’t. You should feel like an Englishman, protecting his heritage.”
Katie said, “I still don’t know if we’ve done the right thing. I mean, there’s still time to declare it as a treasure trove.”
“Well, go ahead, if you want Historical Site Assessment to go out of business and you don’t want a third share of whatever we can sell it for.”
Katie went up to the mirror, licked the tip of her finger and cleaned some of the mud off it. As she did so, she suddenly recoiled, as if she had been stung. “Ow,” she said, and stared at her fingertip. “It gave me a shock.”
“A shock? What kind of a shock?”
“Like static, you know, when you get out of a car.”
Mark approached the mirror and touched it with all five fingers of his left hand. “I can’t feel anything.” He licked his fingers and tried again, and this time he lifted his hand away and said, “Ouch! You’re right! It’s like it’s charged.”