The oak doors behind him crashed open and Broderick pushed his way into the church, followed by a dozen more of his men. They fanned out, silent now they could see the damage to the roof, sharing some of the gunner’s guilt.
Dryden touched the cool stone tomb. Shrapnel had damaged the top of the funeral chest on which the knight lay – the corner of the stone lid had broken away and lay shattered on the floor. He edged closer to the hole, trying not to block any light which might show the contents within, but he could only glimpse cold stone, just on the margin of vision. Closer, he sniffed the fetid air, laced now with the acrid edge of scorched stone.
He walked behind the chest, recognizing the crusader’s tomb from a picture The Crow had run the previous week when he’d written a feature hooked on the decision by campaigners to abandon their legal fight, and previewing the return of live firing to the range.
The centuries had worn the name on the side of the tomb but it was still legible: PEYTON.
As he rounded the stone box Dryden glimpsed a spade leaning against the nave’s outer wall, and black peaty earth scattered over the cool grey stones of the floor. He froze, suddenly feeling that despite the voices of the soldiers near by he was still alone in the church. He could see that one of the large gravestones set into the floor had been lifted to reveal a hole, most of the earth from which lay in a neat pyramid hidden from wider view by the funeral casket of the Peytons. The grave was just three feet deep and empty, a few damp pebbles reflecting the light from the rich coffee-black soil.
The gravestone removed stood on end, leaning by the spade, and showed a heraldic device like a sunflower with the clear etched letters spelling the name again: PEYTON.
The crackle of a radio startled him and he saw Broderick directly below the hole in the roof with his radio operator.
‘Mr Dryden… We’re moving on into the village. There’s nothing we can do here now. I need you close to hand. My men have to run a hose in here – they don’t want you in the way.’
Dryden looked around the church and noted signs of earlier damage. One window was boarded up, and parts of the triple-tiered wooden pulpit were charred by a fire long cold. But why the opened grave?
‘You should see this…’ he said. ‘St Swithun’s has had visitors.’
Broderick shrugged. ‘First things first, if you please. I presume they’re not here now. We need to check the second target, another wayward shell, I’m afraid.’
Dryden knelt by the pile of soil and ran some of it through his hands. Despite the heavy heat of the summer’s day it still felt cool so he plunged his hand in, pulled it back, and examined the moisture visible on his skin.
‘Recent visitors,’ he said, knowing there was no one to hear.
But he felt the hairs on his arm prickle and, standing, fought against the irrational conviction that he was being watched. Then he ran a finger in the dust along the edge of the tomb and along the ten-inch-high letters etched in its side, wondering why the name was familiar, pushing aside the creeping anxiety that he should know the answer.
3
From the church porch Dryden looked down on Jude’s Ferry. St Swithun’s stood on a hill thirty feet high, a peak in the billiard-table landscape of the Fens, the highest point on a low island of clay which had been inhabited for more than 1,000 years. He realized with a shock that he had stood on this precise point seventeen years earlier, the day of the evacuation, looking down on a village bustling with removal vans, army trucks, cars, livestock, the press, radio and TV cameras and a small but vocal band of children. Flags had flown from the army tents set up on the old recreation ground, and along the old Whittlesea Road the last of the sheep were herded, their bleating insistent and alarmed.
It had been an unforgettable assignment. Initially the army’s PR men had tried to keep all contact between the villagers and media to a mid-morning press conference in the Methodist Hall. The print media had agreed to stay away on the Sunday, the feast of St Swithun, to let the villagers enjoy the last saint’s day in privacy. But that Monday morning a bus had taken the press and TV crews from Ely in through the firing-range gates and straight to the Methodist Hall – packed with most of the surviving villagers. It had been a stilted affair dominated by one old soldier who’d clearly been encouraged to stand up and announce that he was proud the village was going to play its part in fighting for freedom. He’d got his medals on for the occasion so the TV boys had fêted him, happy they’d secured their picture story in time for the lunchtime news bulletins. A couple of women, both widows, said they would always remember what the village had done in two world wars – a statement which prompted another photocall at the war memorial at the top of The Dring, the little high street which ran beside an open ditch clogged with tall reeds.
Dryden had gone along to watch, and had noticed a man he presumed was the landlord of the New Ferry Inn, sitting on his doorstep drinking tea, watching with tired eyes, rimmed red. A young man with thick brown hair in a lopsided agricultural cut, shoulders slumped in defeat. Beside him sat a woman, legs bare and folded under her, hair brushed back from a pale face, T-shirt crumpled. She rubbed the heel of her hand into an eye socket, trying to drive away the tiredness, or a memory. He caught her eye and smiled but she fled, the open pub door revealing packing crates on the quarry-tiled floor of the bar.
The man let her go, spilling his tea out in the dust.
The rest of the villagers, sullen and wary, watched the half-hearted little theatre put on for the media: the old soldier arranged before the memorial like a living prop, flanked by the widows. Opposite the inn was a terrace of four stone almshouses, little Victorian castles complete with stone windows and Gothic ironwork. The residents, four elderly men and a woman, sat on a bench outside, stoic in the face of an unseemly invasion of their village. Then a shout went up, from down The Dring, where two soldiers were trying to get an old woman through her cottage door, failing to disguise the fact she didn’t want to leave.
The woman was crying, unsteady on her feet. ‘Please,’ she kept saying, ‘Please, no.’ Her features had dissolved into a mask of anxiety, like a child’s.
The crowd, milling, began to boo and someone lobbed a brick towards one of the army Land Rovers, where it landed on the bonnet. Pebbles and dirt began to fly in the air and the TV camera lights thudded into full action. The elderly woman had fainted and had to be half carried to a waiting ambulance, but behind her the front door of her home was already being boarded up. Further along The Dring an army detail was moving past the old cottages, padlocking doors and closing windows. Glass shattered, prompting more boos from the crowd.
‘You might have the decency to fucking wait,’ shouted a man, his face red and damp with alcohol.
‘Come on, boys,’ said another voice, and the crowd visibly shrank back. ‘Beer’s free – don’t waste it.’ It was the young man from the doorstep of the pub, his tea mug still in hand. ‘It’s too late for trouble – it’s over.’
Dryden tried to judge his age – mid-twenties perhaps, but with a kind of world-weary authority which made him seem older. He led them away, down by the inn where the army had provided lunch in boxes on trestle tables and a last barrel stood out in the shade on blocks. There was a bit more shouting but it was clear now that they didn’t have the heart for a real fight. It was their pride which was at stake, not their homes. They were gone.
The soldiers, sensing the mood, regrouped and slipped away to the tents, neat rows of bleached white, like a Boy Scout camp. Dryden tried to gather some quotes from the men by the inn but most shook their heads, ashamed of their impotence now that the end had come.