Cryptic Clues

Chapter 5

"Marcus had suggested someone should visit Pen Crags and "try to talk sense into those freaks". No one volunteered, so Marcus and I, in my four-by-four Wrangler, drove through the winding lanes into Pen Crags parish. High on the surrounding hillsides the shepherds and cattlemen watched us, appearing to make a blatant point of their lack of concealment. One of them must have blown a dog whistle, which set the entire canine population of the parish barking at once. This achieved, the stockmen melted invisibly into the hillsides.

"As we entered the village we had the disconcerting impression that the people had hushed the dogs, stopped work in farmyards and gardens, closed windows, doors and gates and disappeared into the darkened depths of sculleries and back parlours. In no time at all it seemed the village had become like a place suddenly abandoned.

"The houses of dark moorland stone were clustered at the bottom of a steep valley, the grassy slopes dotted with clumps of gorse and hawthorn bushes and topped by jagged cliffs. Deep shadows filled the hollows and hill creases, where cascading waterfalls caught fleeting gleams of sun. Beyond the valley, dun-coloured moorland stretched into the distance, with here and there a vivid outcrop of flowering ling.

"Marcus, studying the road map, observed that there was only one road into the village, which was a dead end. Any traffic on the road had only one destination. The whole village must have known we were coming to confront them.

"The village street we were entering was completely deserted: no pedestrians, not even a parked vehicle, no signs of activity anywhere. Images arose in my mind of war zones around the world where streets like this would be booby-trapped, interlopers ambushed. I half expected guerilla fighters, bristling with weaponry, to emerge from behind bushes and dry-stone walls.

""It"s a ghost town!" Marcus exclaimed. "Maybe it"s only the dead who live here!" I slowed the Wrangler to walking pace. An imposing mansion built from the same dark stone stood at the northern limits of the village. It lay fifty metres back from the village street, its front garden enclosed by a low dry-stone wall. On the gate was a neatly carved sign that read LOW ROWAN HALL. A mature rowan tree grew on each side of the main entrance.

LOW ROWAN HALL"Beyond the mansion lay a wide crossroads, where the tarmac gave way to rough tracks, surfaced with broken stone. A grass-covered triangle of ground lay at the centre of the crossroads. In the middle of the triangle, in place of a direction sign, a gallows had been erected. Hanging from it was a row of six bodies.

""Is this real?" Marcus exclaimed again. "We"re in a horror movie!" The bodies were straw-stuffed effigies with horrific face masks suggestive of agonised deaths. Pinned to each effigy was a single word. From left to right the words read LEAVE OUR DEAD ALONE... GO HOME.

LEAVE OUR DEAD ALONE... GO HOME"The implied brutality of the scene overwhelmed us. We were immediately concerned for the safety of Annette and Sue, because we had no idea what these people might be capable of. I tried to photograph the effigies with my Canon EOS 5D, but with no success, every exposure resulting in nothing but pale streaks and blobs, like ectoplasm at a spiritualists" seance.

"We decided we were wasting our time and should leave while the Wrangler"s engine was still running."

"You fled," Ray commented suddenly. "Why didn"t you come straight to us?"

"Would you have believed us without hard evidence?"

"I"d have taken the events seriously and done my best to help you. At least you"d have put the situation on record."

"I don"t see what you could have done. It was a doomed project from the start."

Martin looked up from his notes. "So what did you do? Go home? Return to the dig?"

"We felt like a pair of displaced persons. Our momentum and passion were being effectively erased. As we left Pen Crags village we felt watched by a host of invisible eyes."

* * *

"When we arrived back at the dig we found that the trenches had been re-excavated, but none of the contents had been removed. A new finds" tent had been erected from which the voices of the other archaeologists drifted out into the still September air.

"Charles was away consulting Ordnance Survey maps in the county library. Mention of the Pen Crags" gallows freaked the girls out completely. Annette worried that "those people" might be dangerous enough to attack them "or something just as crazy". I said as long as we all stayed together on site we"d be safe. Acts of violence with multiple witnesses would surely be a step too far."

"You were right to think that," Ray said. "We"d have been arresting all the adults in Pen Crags. I"ve a feeling that wasn"t the kind of publicity they"d want."

"Sue said she felt some sympathy for the Pen Crags" people. She asked how we would feel if strangers started digging up our ancestors. She thought, in the future, archaeologists might be compelled to stick to digs that didn"t stir up emotional conflicts. She thought the discipline should respect the views of anyone who objected to the digging up and carting off of their deceased relatives.

"Nigel emphasised the point that the burials here were of ancestors, probably pre-Roman and over two thousand years old. How could anyone still be attached to such ancient remains? But Sue said it was obvious some people still were.

ancestors"I said I thought the situation we were in was completely ridiculous. The dead had a contribution to make to the world of knowledge. It was blinkered and unreasonable to deny this to the wider world. Annette thought that if she was one of those dead ancestors she"d want her remains to be investigated; she"d want the world to know how she"d lived, what her social status was, maybe even how she"d died. I laughed and observed we had as many differing opinions as we had members of the team. Judging by this sample, society would remain divided.

"Charles stepped through the tent flap. He seemed pleased to find everyone energised and animated. He told us he had found a discrepancy between the 1851 and 1910 maps. The parish boundary between Pen Crags and Stone Clough followed a stream to the south of Ludd"s Castle on the 1851 map, but as we"d seen for ourselves there was no stream there now. It was his guess it was diverted before the 1910 map was surveyed. He"d phoned the Ordnance Survey and learned that the next survey of this area was ongoing. "So maybe Pen Crags will get its burial site back."

"In the meantime he insisted that we must continue with the excavation, focusing on high-status burials first, taking the physical remains and the grave goods, then backfilling the trenches before anyone from Pen Crags realised. We would keep the finds" trays locked up in the department"s van and only do minimal cleaning in the tent. In this way we hoped we would fulfil our responsibilities to the thinking public, the university and ourselves. We would have to work fast and Charles asked me to ring the usual reserves.

"As I drove back to the university in the early evening I recalled Charles"s resolve with a heart-warming feeling of pleasure. The team was unified behind strong leadership. But in spite of my buoyant mood a niggling doubt began to worm its way into my mind. If we continued with the excavation in this clandestine manner, would we be guilty of an act of hubris? And, if so, what dire nemesis might follow?"