John Preston - The Dig

As it did so, I realized this was the sole of a shoe or sandal. I stared in fascination as it bent and stretched. It looked exactly as if a living foot was still inside, taking on substance before me. But when I took it out of the bowl, it disintegrated immediately. All that was left was this weightless slime that fell from my fingers in long brown strands.

When we broke for lunch we all — the men included — sat on the top of the trench, our legs stretched out in front of us, eating the sandwiches that Mrs. Pretty had provided. At one point Phillips dropped an apple. It rolled down the bank, bounced across two of the terraces and came to rest in the middle of the burial chamber. Without being asked, Robert slid down the bank and went to retrieve it for him. I saw the appalled expression on Phillips’s face as Robert scampered across the crust of sand. However, he managed to make a reasonably plausible job of thanking him for his trouble when his apple was returned.

But his mood deteriorated sharply when Mrs. Pretty informed him that she had invited a number of local people to a sherry party on the following Tuesday so that they could have a chance to inspect the ship. She apologized for not telling him earlier, but said that it had slipped her mind in all the excitement. She also mentioned that her nephew was on a bicycling holiday in East Anglia and would be arriving that afternoon. A keen amateur photographer, he hoped to be able to take some pictures of the excavation.

I could see that both of these pieces of information were extremely unwelcome to Phillips. He could hardly say anything, though. Only the curtness of his replies gave away the scale of his displeasure.

Once we had finished eating, we set to again. Mrs. Pretty disappeared back beneath her umbrella, trying without much success to keep Robert beside her. Above our heads tiny silver aeroplanes darted about among the clouds. The sun was even hotter now; the earth had been baked quite dry and in places was starting to turn powdery and run. Stuart, I knew, was concerned that the combination of wet and heat could cause fissures to open up all over the boat. But the only thing we could do was keep everything covered when we were not working.

The hissing noise I heard sounded like air escaping from a bicycle tire. I looked up. Stuart was bent over, facing away from me. He didn’t move. Just as I was wondering where the sound could have come from, I heard another hiss.

I went over. He had uncovered what appeared to be a layer of wood. The wood was plainly very rotten — it was practically transparent. The streaks of grain were held together by only the thinnest of skins.

“Can you see that?” he said quietly. His finger was extended. “There, in the background.”

Standing up, I couldn’t see what he meant. However, the moment I squatted down, I saw it straightaway. Behind this screen of decayed wood, I made out a faint gleam.

When I shifted my head fractionally to the side, the gleam vanished. But as soon as I moved my head back — by the same fractional amount — back it came again.

“You do see what I’m talking about, don’t you, darling?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Thank God for that,” he said. “I was beginning to think my eyes were playing tricks.”

Stuart kept brushing away. Every few seconds he broke off to check on his progress, rocking back onto his knees, then tilting forward again. As he did so, I could see more gold emerging from behind this powdery screen. There appeared to be three separate pieces. One looked identical to the pyramid I had found the day before. The other two were small gold plaques, both around two inches in length — one flat and triangular, the other with a more rounded end. Each had the same intricate threading of gold around an inlay of garnets.

All of them were so beautiful. So delicate and yet so pristine. They were like emissaries from another world, undimmed by the mass of centuries that had passed since they had been last seen. Or rather, it was as if all those centuries had counted for nothing. Time had simply flown by between then and now.

Neither of us could look away. Stuart extended one arm towards me. I took hold of his wrist. “I never imagined…” he said. “I thought yesterday might have been a fluke. But this — my God. What are we going to do?”

There was a note of helplessness in his voice. Tightening my grip, I found myself saying, “Don’t worry, darling. It’ll be all right.”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, of course it will… We’d better call the others. I suppose.”

But in the event, there was no need to. Something had already alerted Charles Phillips.

“What is it?” he was saying. “What have you found?” He was quickly joined by Robert. The tone of their voices sounded identical, both equally excited.

“It’s more gold, CW,” said Stuart. “Quite a bit more gold, in fact.”

Phillips, I saw, was puce with frustration. He paced back and forth along the top of the trench, almost colliding with Robert as he did so. After he had done this a few times, he stopped and said, “Just don’t move, either of you. Is that perfectly clear? I am coming down the ladder.”

As quickly as he could, Phillips began to descend. At this point discipline rather broke down. He was followed by Mrs. Pretty and then by Robert. Throughout this, the men — Mr. Brown, Mr. Spooner and Mr. Jacobs — remained on the bank, looking down.

Meanwhile, in the trench, the five of us — Stuart and myself, Charles Phillips, Mrs. Pretty and Robert — knelt and gazed at what had been found. Looking at the pieces of jewelry, I was overcome by an enormous sense of insignificance. Not just my own insignificance, but everybody’s. I felt as if we were all insects who had been tipped onto our backs and were waving our legs vainly at the sky.

After a while Phillips ordered everyone from the chamber. Everyone apart from Stuart and myself. “What would you like us to do, CW?” Stuart asked.

Behind his spectacles, Phillips’s eyes were still swimming about. Slowly, they steadied and sharpened.

“Do?” he said. “Carry on, of course.”

Once we had removed the two gold plaques and the gold pyramid, we continued in the same southern corner of the chamber. Stuart took one side of a square and I took the opposite one. Together, we worked our way towards the center.

As on the previous day, but even more so now, I felt there was this enormous gap between my outward behavior and my inner world. On the outside, I was perfectly controlled. I could see my fingers holding the pastry brush, sweeping carefully and methodically at the soil. My mind, though, was a riot. Dazzled one moment, then plunged into confusion the next.

But even in the midst of this headspin, I knew with absolute certainty that I would unearth something else. It never occurred to me for a moment that I wouldn’t. All the time my hands worked unhesitatingly away, just as if they were being guided. They might have had strings attached to them. And when I did find something, I felt no sense of surprise at all. I felt only relief that I had done what I had been supposed to do.

I had uncovered a kidney-shaped object. This too was made of gold. It was approximately three inches in length with one straight edge. Three tiny rectangles protruded from the one straight edge. Each of these rectangles was the same distance apart.

Stuart appeared beside me as I was staring at it. “What do you think, darling?” he asked. His voice was more businesslike now; the helplessness had disappeared completely.

“Possibly a purse lid?” I suggested. “These pieces here look as if they might be hinges.”

“They do, don’t they? Shall we have it out?”

As soon as I had prised the purse lid free, I saw that it had been lying face-down. On the reverse side, it was decorated in a similar style to the pyramids, inlaid with garnets and pieces of millefiori glass. Once I had blown the remaining grains of sand away, I saw something else. There was a pattern there. Two birds had been etched into the gold. Their eyes had also been picked out with tiny garnets — smaller than pinheads. Both of the birds had their heads back and their claws extended.