Catherine Fisher: Darkhenge

Anger grows in the deep places.

Deep, under the earth.

THE BOOK OF TALIESIN

There was always a dig going on somewhere around Avebury. Every summer people came, usually students on some university course on the Neolithic or Bronze Age, cutting trenches out on the Beckhampton Avenue to find if it was really there, or investigating anomalies from aerial photos.

Silbury Hill was the strangest place in a landscape of strangeness. Rob could understand avenues of stone, and circles of them even; he could imagine processions, and dancing and, as Dan reckoned, bloodthirsty sacrifices, but with all the hills around why build an artificial one? Huge and conical, shaggy with grass, the vast mound dominated the downs. Even from here on the Ridgeway he could see it, peeping over the top of Waden, a platform in the sky. It could be a tomb, but no one was buried in it. It could be a place to observe the stars. He had no doubt that the Cauldron people would tell him it was the womb of the earth goddess. Getting back on the bike, he cycled over ruts, the bag on his back jolting. There were things you could never find out about the past. Digging up bits of antler could only tell you so much. The stories to explain them were all gone. Like what had made Callie rear up that day. What had flung Chloe off her back. As he came to the A4, he stopped, waiting for a gap in the traffic. They must have had artists, those Stone Age people. Decorating pots, making statuettes. Maybe a great artist designed Silbury. Maybe it had no purpose, but just was. Did art need a purpose?

He cycled across the road. Beyond it the Ridgeway dropped; it passed a line of burial mounds and then crossed the Kennet on a tiny, rickety bridge, leading him to the back lane of West Overton. He cycled faster now, on the tarmac.

It took ten minutes to find the dig. Here in the valley there were none of the wide, open views of the downland; hedges and houses and church towers gathered together, modern bungalows and cottages with satellite dishes turning their backs uneasily on the prehistoric, windy uplands.

Down a muddy lane with grass growing in its center he found a parked car, a few bicycles in the hedge. There was a gate, and he stopped the bike and looked through the bars.

At once a bearded man came out of a Portakabin. “Can I help?” It sounded more like a threat, Rob thought. He got off the bike.

“I heard you needed an artist. To draw finds and things.” It sounded lame. He had no idea what the right name for the job was.

But the archaeologist just said, “Who sent you?”

“A girl. She said to ask for Dr. Kavanagh.” He was glad he’d remembered the name.

The man turned. “Leave the bike.”

Rob climbed the gate. The field was muddy, oddly so for chalk country, and as they walked he saw it led down into a hollow. At the bottom was the dig, but to his surprise a high metal fence had been erected all around it, so nothing could be seen.

“Wait here.” The bearded man went inside, through a gate.

Rob glanced around.

It was eerily quiet. No rows of students troweling, no one taking photographs. A bird was chirping in the hedge, and beyond that somewhere a car droned down a distant lane. Wind rippled the edges of a plastic sheet. The rest of the field was deserted.

A woman came out from the metal fence. She was wearing blue overalls and a T-shirt, and had blond hair, tied back. She looked at him with hostility. “What girl?”

“I … don’t know her name. She was a student.”

“She had no business sending you here.”

Rob blinked. “I’ll go then. Sorry.”

The woman frowned. “Let me see your work. I presume you’ve brought something.”

He’d seen her before somewhere. It suddenly struck him that she might be Dr. Kavanagh, and the image he hadn’t realized he had, of a middle-aged man in tweeds, vanished. Awkward, he took out a sketchbook and handed it to her.

She flipped through the pages. Rob tried to stand confidently. He hated people looking at his work, but he knew it was good. He was an accurate draftsman, he delighted in intricate drawings of anything that was complicated: machines, trees, buildings. At first the pages were ruffled quickly but he knew by the way she slowed, the way she gazed, that she was impressed. He lifted his chin a little.

“Well, yes. But you’ve had no training. We need sections, reconstructions, plans. Careful measurements, accuracy.”

“I could learn.” He licked his lips. “The girl said you were shorthanded.”

Dr. Kavanagh closed the book and handed it back. She breathed deep, put her hands on her hips, and stared down at a muddy boot. Then she looked up at him, considering, and he saw her eyes were blue and clear.

“What’s your name?”

“Robert Drew.”

“Local?”

“Yes.”

“Dependable? Not going off on holiday?”

“No,” he muttered.

She was silent. Then she said, “Look, Robert, this project is very important. It’s also likely to prove controversial, so we don’t want news of it getting out. If I trace any leaks in security back to you, you’re off the site. Understand?”

He shrugged. Had they found treasure? Gold?

“We are short of people, though that’s as I want it. There’s not much money. Three pounds an hour, strictly cash. If anyone asks, you’re just a volunteer. I can’t be bothered with paperwork.”

He could probably get more wiping tables, but then what he’d said to Dan was true. He had enough money. And somehow her reluctance made him more keen. “Okay.”

She sighed, as if she still wasn’t sure. Then she turned. “Come on.”

The metal fence was head high. Behind it, he found a network of bewilderment: trenches, ridges of sliced soil, pegs and strings, tags with numbers stuck in the earth. The bearded man crouched in the center, and another student lay flat, scraping painfully at things Rob couldn’t even distinguish from mud.

It was very disappointing.

“I’ll give you a quick run-through,” Dr. Kavanagh said briskly. “An aerial survey in the nineties showed up some peculiar crop marks in this field; a geo-phys study two years ago confirmed them. They showed a circular disturbance. Not so unusual in this landscape, but funds weren’t forthcoming at the time to excavate anyway.” She spoke rapidly, as if she were lecturing some group, her eyes darting over the site. He had a feeling she didn’t miss much. “When we started to dig, though, everything changed. This hollow is possibly the most exciting thing in British archaeology for years.” She pointed. “Notice anything about the soil?”

Rob swung the backpack off and dumped it; then he crouched, looking. He knew nothing about any of this, but it wouldn’t hurt to seem keen. “It’s the wrong color,” he said.

She raised an eyebrow. “Meaning?”

“The soil around here is chalk. White, full of flints—I mean, I know this is near the river, but it’s brown. Chocolate. Sort of burnt umber.”

For the first time she looked at him with a flicker of interest. Then she said, “Yes. Well, it’s actually a form of peat. A complete geological fluke, contained in an impermeable saucer of very hard rock, not at all like the chalk or local limestones. Not only that, but it’s saturated with water, probably from a series of hidden springs rising under it. The conditions are totally bizarre for this area. That’s what makes it so fascinating.”

He stood, brushing his knees. There was nothing to say. It sounded totally boring to him.

She must have guessed that, because she laughed, a cool, mirthless laugh. “And look what we’ve found in it.”

He looked. At first he couldn’t make out anything at all, his eyes bewildered by the variety of trenches. And then, with the sort of shift he recognized from looking at optical illusions, the strangeness resolved into a shape inside the mess and disorder.