Peter Lovesey: Skeleton Hill

‘Stop knocking it. We go to a lot of trouble to get the uniforms right. You should see my cavalry gear. Hand sewn.’

Rupert smiled. ‘I was given mine on loan. I know the rules. If I carry on, I’m expected to supply my own.’

‘Quite right, too. And make sure you get the proper fabric. You’ll be inspected. Real leather belt and boots. All the weapons have to be accurate replicas. ’

‘Firing blanks and thunderflashes.’

‘What do you expect?’ Dave said, increasingly put out. ‘I tell you, I wouldn’t be here if there were cannonballs flying about.’

Rupert smiled. ‘True.’

Dave said, ‘We’re putting on a show for the public, and we do the best we can with what we’ve got.’

‘The real thing wasn’t very satisfactory anyway. They fought to a standstill and nobody won on the day. You saw that drystone wall up to the left?’

‘Yeah.’

‘His musketeers used it as cover and held off the royalists until late in the evening. It’s known as Waller’s wall even to this day. If you look at it closely you can see where it’s been repaired, to fill the holes they made. When it was dark they slipped back to the city, leaving some burning tinder along the top to give the impression they were still camped there.’

‘You couldn’t re-enact that,’ Dave said. ‘Nobody would stay that long. Fancy another?’ He dug his hand into the loose soil again.

A shake of the head from Rupert. ‘One was good. That’s my limit.’

Dave was groping up to his elbow among the earth and dead leaves for his second drink. The search was increasingly agitated. ‘I can’t find it. There were six here.’ He used both hands, exploring every part of the hiding place. ‘Some tosser must have nicked them.’

‘One of the enemy?’ Rupert said.

‘You could be right. Bloody roundheads. None of our lot were about earlier, but I did see one of them.’

‘At least he had the decency to leave the two cans we had.’

‘You call that decent?’ Dave was still scrabbling in the hole.

‘There’s something down here, but it isn’t a can. It isn’t a tree root either.’ He lifted out an object over a foot in length, narrow and with bulbous ends. After picking off some caked earth, he said, ‘Only an old bone.’

‘Some animal must have buried it,’ Rupert said. ‘A fox, I expect.’ Dave held the bone in both hands. ‘Well, whatever this was, it was bigger than the fox when it was alive.’

Rupert said, ‘It’s a femur.’ Not wanting to sound too much of an academic, he added, ‘Thigh bone.’

‘But of what?’

‘Might be a deer.’

‘You know what?’ Dave said. ‘I’ve just had a spooky thought. It could be human.’

‘Up here on Lansdown? How would it get here?’

‘This is the spooky part. What if it belonged to one of the soldiers who was killed in the battle?’

There was a moment when nothing was said. The sounds of the fighting were distant now, muffled by a sudden breeze.

It was Rupert who spoke next. ‘Nasty.’

‘But not impossible?’

‘You could be right. There must have been corpses scattered all over the down. The army would have buried their dead up here before they moved on. They were in a campaign. They couldn’t take them home for burial.’

Dave shook his head. ‘Makes you think, doesn’t it? Here we are, all dressed up and playing soldiers, and this was a guy who really bought it.’

‘That does put a different perspective on the day,’ Rupert said. ‘If it is human.’

‘I’ve a gut feeling it is.’ He placed the bone respectfully between them, as if he didn’t wish to handle it any more. ‘What shall we do with it?’

Secretly excited by the find, Rupert decided to appear indifferent. ‘Put it back, I suggest.’

Dave was a bit of a mind reader. ‘One of them archaeologists might be interested. There could be more stuff buried here.’

‘I rather doubt it,’ Rupert said. ‘The tree was growing over it.’

‘Three hundred years ago that tree wasn’t here.’

‘I don’t know. How long does a tree live?’

‘They could arrange a dig here and find more bones, even some of his armour.’

‘Along with your missing beer. Should confuse them.’

Dave shook his head. ‘Some bastard had the beer.’

‘I wasn’t serious.’

‘You’re right,’ Dave said. ‘I vote we leave it here. We can’t join in the battle again with a thing like that in our hands.’

‘You agree to bury it again?’

‘Leave the poor guy in peace.’

‘That’s the decent thing,’ Rupert said. ‘I’m with you, Dave. He’s rested here for over three hundred years. We don’t have any right to disturb him.’

Dave dug out more of the leaf mould and they replaced the bone at about its original depth and covered it.

‘RIP, whoever you are,’ Dave said.

‘Amen to that,’ Rupert said.

They slung their empties a respectful distance from the internment and returned to the battle.

After the fighting was over, the King’s Army picked up their casualties, assembled behind the standard and made a dignified withdrawal from the field, marching to the slow beat of a single drum. The cavalry went first, followed by the artillery hauling the guns and then the foot soldiers and finally the camp followers, mostly women. This wasn’t true to history, but in contrast to the noise and confusion of the fighting it made an impressive spectacle for the crowd watching from higher up. There was spontaneous applause. The parliament army would make a similar exit later.

When they reached the road that runs along the top of Lansdown, the marchers broke step and headed back to the car park at the racecourse where they’d left their transport: rented buses as well as horse boxes, vans and flat-top lorries for the cannon. Many had come in their own cars. While some loaded up and stowed away the weaponry, others attended to the horses or prepared barbecues. At least a couple of hours would pass agreeably in banter and debate about the fighting.

Rupert, new to all this, took his cue from the regulars, assisting where he could before slipping away to his car and changing out of his sweaty battle costume into a cool shirt and shorts. He was still curious about the femur Dave had unearthed. If, as they had speculated, it was part of the remains of a Civil War soldier from the original battle, this was an exciting find. In all the years he’d spent as an academic he’d never felt the touch of the past in such a direct way.

There was a good chance of finding more bones – perhaps a complete skeleton – lower down. And, if so, surely there would be metal objects preserved, a breastplate, a helmet or a sword.

How pleasing it would be to bring a group of students to the site and supervise them in a dig. Good for them and good for his career. He could visualise himself writing a paper about the discovery, giving a slide lecture, doing an article for History Today .

First – not wishing to make a fool of himself – he would need to establish beyond doubt that the bone was human in origin. And then find out if it really was as old as he hoped. Carbon dating ought to establish its age. The university had the technology, so why not make use of it?

His conscience troubled him a little. He and Dave had talked about putting the dead soldier’s femur to rest where they’d found it. He’d gone along with the suggestion. To return to the place and secretly retrieve the bone would be underhand. Dave wouldn’t approve, but then who was Dave? Just a simple guy who liked playing soldiers. He wouldn’t understand the pursuit of historical truth.

Rupert joined in the barbecue for a while, made himself a burger and chatted to the others, then slipped away as if for a call of nature. Using the parked buses to shield his movements, he crossed the car park and the golf course and made a detour so as to cross the road out of sight of everyone. The flat top of Lansdown Hill was all too open for his liking, so he moved in the direction that had the steepest descent until he could be certain he was no longer visible from the car park.