Ravensborough (13 page)

‘You’ll be working on this. It’s an outhouse of some description, but we haven’t worked out exactly what it was used for yet. Liv and Gethan have been on digs before, they know the ropes. They’ll be able to show you how to get started.’

This day just kept getting better. Not only had I gotten up at an ungodly hour in the morning, but I was going to spend the day kneeling in the mud with a member of a terrorist gang and a girl who had obviously taken an instant dislike to me. Great. I was relieved when another dig novice named Declan was assigned to our trench too. At least his presence might dilute the atmosphere a little bit.

Declan seemed very quiet, but I sensed that it was due to him feeling nervous and uneasy rather than Liv-style rudeness.

‘I’m kind of nervous about this,’ I confessed to him, hoping to bring him out of his shell a bit. Liv and Gethan had gone off to get some tools. ‘The nearest I’ve ever been to a dig was building sandcastles on the beach when I was a kid.’

The boy turned to me, an anxious expression in his eyes. He looked scared and panicked. ‘I don’t want to work in this trench. Do you think Professor Nighthawk will move me?’

‘I...I don’t know’, I said confused. I didn’t really think that it made a difference what particular trench we worked on. We were so new to this that we were unlikely to make an amazing discovery. ‘Do you want to work on the main temple?’

‘I don’t mind what I’m digging, I just don’t want to work with
him
,’ Declan said bitterly. He nodded towards Gethan who was wheeling a loaded wheelbarrow towards where we were standing. He turned on his heel and walked over in the direction of Nick.

‘What’s his problem?’ Gethan asked pulling shovels, buckets and trowels from the barrow.

‘He said that he feels uncomfortable working with you,’ I answered honestly.

‘I suppose he’s not the only one who feels like that,’ Gethan said handing me a small trowel.

‘Do people often feel like that around you?’ I asked, ignoring his comment.

‘Let’s just say it’s no coincidence that Nick put me working on a side project,’ he said grimly.

So that was a yes then.

Liv came back then, and we finally got down to the business of digging. Excavations had always seemed really exciting to me when I’d watched programmes on television or read books on famous digs, but I discovered in those first couple of hours that it was really hard work. You couldn’t just dig down until you hit something interesting. Archaeologists date items partly from the soil context. The level of soil that an item is found in can help date the object and it can also shed light on what it was used for. We had to scrape layer after layer of soil off the surface of the trench, millimetre by millimetre, putting the dirt into buckets which we periodically emptied into a wheelbarrow. Whenever the barrow looked dangerously full Gethan would wheel it off and empty it into the big pile of earth at the end of the field.

It was hard work. Kneeling on the cold ground was difficult, and I had to keep shifting position as my legs fell asleep. After a few hours had passed, we had removed an entire soil layer, but found absolutely nothing except stones and some small pieces of animal bone. Eventually, Nick came over and took photos of the trench from a variety of different angles.

‘Good work guys, go for lunch now. When you come back later, try to move the trench down to the next level.’

We had an hour for lunch, and the prospect of sitting down cheered me up immensely. The activity had kept me warm as I dug, but as soon as I stopped working my body registered just how cold it was. The weather here was harsh anyway, and our altitude meant that the temperatures were even lower. Aradia invited me to eat lunch with her and Gethan in his jeep. With slight reservations I agreed. I didn’t know anyone else here, apart from Declan and Liv, and I didn’t particularly want to eat with either of them. Besides, there were plenty of people around. What harm could come to me? The cold air was a clincher: I desperately wanted to shelter from the harsh Avalonian winds.

I unpacked my sandwiches, and Aradia poured me some bitter lukewarm coffee from a flask.

Gethan shot me an unfriendly look as I climbed into his jeep. ‘Oh, so my car is good enough for you now is it?’

‘Gethan, stop it. The whole thing was a complete misunderstanding. I would have done the same thing in her situation,’ Aradia said sharply. I was surprised that she was coming to my defence.

‘Oh yeah?’ asked Gethan disbelievingly. ‘And why is that?’

‘Because her face wasn’t just injured during a stabbing, and she didn’t just witness a murder. She witnessed a murder carried out by the FPL,’ said Aradia. ‘And you know what? The main assailant had a certain mark along the inside of his left arm.’

‘Ah...’ said Gethan. His face was still closed off and serious, but there was understanding there too. ‘You saw my mark.’

‘And are you a part of that gang?’ I asked. He hesitated for a second. ‘Oh my God, you are, aren’t you?!’

‘That mark doesn’t mean that he’s in a gang, Scarlett’, Aradia argued. ‘All it means is that they practice the same type of magic.’

‘I don’t do what they do’, Gethan explained earnestly. ‘I would never hurt you, never hurt anyone. But if you’re asking whether I’m linked with them, well, then the answer is I am. But it’s by birth
only
. I’ve no involvement with the Federation for Pagan Liberation. I just have the same powers as some of its members.’

‘But...my friend said that it was a gang mark,’ I argued back confusedly.

Aradia rolled her eyes. ‘Well, then your friend was wrong.’

‘You could have asked me to explain’, Gethan said, a note of anger in his voice. ‘You didn’t have to just run off like that.’

‘What, you expected me to stay in the car with you?’ I asked heatedly. ‘They
killed a man
,
and I saw it happen
. I’ve had nightmares ever since. I was told they were all part of a gang, that they all had tattoos like yours, and then I see you with one?’ My voice was rising with emotion. ‘I was
scared
! I thought you were part of that and that you might hurt me. Maybe I should have explained. But all I could think of was the blood and the look on that man’s face as the knife went in. Don’t tell me that in my situation you wouldn’t have done the exact same thing.’

Gethan gave me a grim nod, like he understood. I still wasn’t completely sure what was going on here, but I believed that it was a misunderstanding. Maybe I was a fool, but now that I was with him again, I couldn’t believe that Gethan could be capable of the type of evil I’d witnessed.

‘Ok, that’s cleared up,’ said Aradia pouring herself another coffee from her thermos. Then with her unique ability to flit from topic to topic she moved on. ‘So Scarlett, what have you been up to since we saw you last?’

The next day I was paired with Gethan as we worked to extend the trench a couple of feet to get more of the building in. A day earlier, being that close to him would have bothered me, but I was starting to feel comfortable around him again. His sleeves were rolled up and I couldn’t help but notice the way that the muscles in his arms worked as we scraped away the dirt with our trowels. His tattoo was visible, and I got a better look at it. Instead of the broad black strokes I’d seen on the attackers tattoo, the lines on Gethan’s tattoo were a light grey colour. The pale blue section was so light it was almost white. Come to think of it, his tattoo looked like a watered down version of theirs.

Nick walked over to the edge of the trench. ‘You’re doing well Scarlett. Are your muscles starting to hurt yet?’

They were, actually. Kneeling on damp soil and the repetitive motion of scraping up the soil meant that my back, legs and arms ached. When I said this to Nick, he just laughed. ‘It’s always the second day that’s the worst. You may think that you feel bad today, but you’ll be much worse tomorrow. That’s when the cramps will really kick in.’ He walked away.

‘Well he’s a ray of sunshine isn’t he?’ I complained, scraping at the soil with more vigour than was strictly necessary.

Gethan laughed.

‘So, what is this connection with the FPL then? If you’re not part of the – what did Aradia call it – the liberation movement?’

He knelt up and looked at me thoughtfully. ‘Well there’s a change of subject.’

‘I’m starting to get blisters on my hands from the trowel,’ I held my hands out to him to prove it. ‘I need some distraction.’

‘Oh, and my life story is going to fill that need? Wow, I’m flattered!’ he teased.

‘You should be, so stop stalling,’ I retorted as I got back to digging. ‘We’re friends, aren’t we? So you should be able to tell me.’

‘But what if I thought that telling you something like that may lead to us not being friends?’ he asked, a serious expression on his face.

I rolled my eyes at him. ‘I thought you were part of a gang who
kill people
, Gethan. There’s not much that you could tell me that would top that is there?'

‘Probably not, no,’ he admitted.

‘Well then! If I were you I’d just tell me and get it over with,’ I said, pouring some earth into a plastic bucket. If we’re going to be friends I’m going to find out sooner or later.’

He thought about that for a few seconds. Eventually he said ‘I
will
tell you Scarlett, I promise. Just not here. Ok?’

‘Where then?’

‘What are you doing tonight?’

‘After I finish here? I’ve nothing planned.’

‘Ok. Well, how about we go get something to eat and then I can tell you everything?’

‘Everything?’

He grinned. ‘Well maybe not
everything
. But pretty close.’

Liv walked towards us. She’d been helping out at the finds table, where everything that was found in the ground was photographed and catalogued. ‘Have you found anything interesting?’ she asked.

‘Not yet’, I answered shaking my hair out of my eyes. My hands were too covered in dirt to use them. ‘Some animal bones, a couple of pieces of glass, but no more than that.’

A large black bird landed on the bank of the trench. Most birds that I’d seen seemed to be wary of people, but this bird didn’t look at all bothered to be standing so close to us. It was beautiful, its feathers a glossy black and its eyes darker than that still. It put its head to one side and looked in our direction.

‘Damn, that means that we’re going to have an unlucky week’, said Gethan as he looked at it. ‘We might as well just close the trench up right now.’

‘I didn’t know crows were bad luck’ I said.

Liv smirked. ‘That’s not just a crow Scarlett. It’s a raven.’

She seemed to find my lack of knowledge amusing. ‘Well I wouldn’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t know much about birds.’

Liv laughed.

‘Why is that so funny?’ I asked defensively.

My tone must have registered because she stopped laughing immediately. She looked at me strangely. ‘Seriously? You know nothing about ravens?’

‘Nothing. I grew up in Ireland, and live in a Rationalist area now. So I don’t know very much about bird superstition,’ I said defensively. I’d no idea why I was getting so riled up over an off the cuff comment.

‘Of course not. I’m sorry for laughing,’ she replied. She shot me another strange look and walked off.

‘What is her problem?’ I asked Gethan angrily, using my trowel with more force than necessary.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, looking genuinely confused. ‘She’s usually a lot friendlier than that.’

‘Maybe to you and Aradia, but not to me. For some reason she’s decided that I’m not worth her time or effort.’

I was still scraping hard with my trowel, when all of a sudden I felt a metallic clink. I moved some more soil away. Something shiny flashed brightly among the dull earth.

‘Gethan, I think... I think I’ve found something’, I said slowly.

Gethan looked over and scraped at a little with the narrow part of his trowel. The gleam of silver got bigger. ‘Keep digging,’ he said as he stood up. ‘I’ll go and get Nick.’

Squawks could be heard everywhere. As I looked up I saw that the trees were black with ravens clustered on all the branches. I continued scraping away at the soil, freeing up the edges of the object. It looked like a box of some kind. Nick ran over and climbed down into the trench. I offered him the trowel but, to my surprise, he shook his head. He hunkered down beside me and gently coached me on how to free the item without disrupting the other soil layers. I felt clumsy as I tried to free the object, and a couple of times my hand slipped, the clang of my trowel banging against the metal of the object. Students from the other trenches gathered around to see what I’d found.

It was a box, square and about the size of my hand, made completely from hammered silver. There seemed to be an inscription on the top, but it was too dirty to read. I tried to push some of the soil away with my finger to get a better look.

‘Don’t do that,’ Nick interjected quickly. ‘Your hands produce a type of oil, and it could harm the artefact if it gets onto it.’

The words were said nicely, but I still blushed, annoyed at myself for the mistake. Finally I freed the box from the ground, and I picked it up. Mud clung to its sides, and it had a heavy dense weight. Eager to see what was inside, I gingerly opened the lid, which moved back easily on its hinge. Before I could see what was in it though, Nick intervened. ‘Don’t open it here. We don’t want to get soil inside it.’

I closed the lid, annoyed at myself for messing up yet again.

‘It’s ok, you didn’t know. It’s a training dig, and you’re here to learn.’ He took the box from my hands. ‘And you’re doing really well. I think you have the potential to be a fine archaeologist, if you want to be.’

He brought the box over to the finds table that had been set up at the far end of the field. As Nick handed the box over to the students at the table to clean up properly, I felt a weird sensation in the pit of my stomach. A feeling of belonging pulsed through me, and I wanted to go over to the finds table and take it back. But that was ridiculous. The box didn’t belong to me, it was an artefact. Liv was examining it now, and a dark feeling moved through me. How dare she examine it, judge it like she’d judged me a few minutes ago? I shook, myself shocked at the strength of my feelings. What was happening to me?