5
Wednesday 27th March
There was no sign of Judith Bassett or her car when Sage arrived at the cottage to set up the following morning. As Elliott was setting up the tables under the awning – Steph was at the university, attending classes – a car pulled onto the gravel drive behind her van. A young man in torn jeans and a graffiti-covered jacket jumped out.
Elliott strode over to meet him. ‘Can I help you?’ His tone didn’t sound very helpful.
‘It’s OK, Ell, I’ll deal with this.’ Sage watched him walk back to the table, still scowling. The man fished in the pocket of his leather jacket.
‘Hi. Dr Westfield, right?’ He flashed her an ID card. ‘Paul Turpin, structural engineer. I’m here to have a look at the well.’
She shook his hand. ‘Sage. It’s over here.’
Turpin stopped just short of the edge, and scanned the hole. ‘Bloody hell. It’s way too close to the house. If it collapses, it could take the foundations and back wall out.’ He touched the top of the ladder. ‘Tell me you haven’t been down there.’
‘OK,’ Sage lied, ‘I haven’t been down there.’
‘You can’t just climb down into a well that old. It’s likely to collapse on you.’
Sage smiled at him. ‘It seems in such good condition.’
‘Of course it’s in good condition, it’s been filled in. But if you take out the stabilising fill, you have a circular five-hundred-year-old garden wall.’ He leaned over, looking down into the void. ‘You’ve gone down, what, three metres?’
‘Almost. The thing is, two metres down – easy reach with tools – we found a human bone.’
Turpin looked up at her, his fringe flopping over a row of studs in one eyebrow. If she hadn’t seen his credentials, Sage would have taken him to be an art student.
‘Wow.’ He knelt on the tarpaulin surrounding the well, and peeled it back from the edge. ‘That’s good masonry,’ he said. ‘I mean, for a five-hundred-year-old death trap. Well mortared, dressed to fit tightly.’
‘So it’s safe.’
‘Ha.’ He started scraping away at the top stone. ‘No. Have you seen this?’
Sage bent to look. The top ring of stones was flat, but Turpin’s scratching had revealed what appeared to be intentional tool marks.
‘I thought the well would have a little wall around it for safety, and might have been levelled at some point,’ she said.
‘Some wells are like that, mostly to prevent injury, but flat wells are also fairly common. This one probably would have had a capstone or wooden cover, with a hole big enough to take a bucket, but it would stop people and animals falling in.’ Turpin stood, and put one foot onto the top of the ladder they had been using to bring up buckets of spoil.
‘I thought you said it wasn’t safe?’
‘Not for you, but I’m a professional.’ He carefully climbed a few steps down the ladder, and started scraping the algae and mud away from the walls. ‘I think this was always meant to be a shallow well.’
‘How do you know?’ Sage could see his hands moving over the stones, in the light of the rigged lamp.
‘The stones are mortared very solidly at the top, well fitted together. Down here,’ his voice echoed in the tight space, ‘the mortar isn’t complete. I don’t think it was designed to be. The water table’s high in this area of the Isle of Wight, over Pleistocene clays on top of marls and limestones. The looser fit of the stones allowed water to trickle in.’ He was momentarily illuminated by a flash from his phone. ‘The water must have picked up salt at high tide. There are a lot of crystals down here.’
Sage waited until Turpin had climbed out before she spoke. ‘We need to get the infill out to completely remove the skeletons and hopefully, establish the history of the interment.’
‘Of course.’ He leaned forward and showed her the image on his phone. ‘Look at this.’
One of the blocks had a carving in it. The algae had clung to the inscription after he had scraped at the surface. The shapes were crudely scratched but complex, curves and squiggles that looked intentional. It reminded her of ancient Greek, but she couldn’t quite place it. ‘What is it?’
‘Absolutely no idea. It looks like there are other inscriptions down there. Creepy.’
‘Why creepy?’ She leaned over the edge.
‘Well, someone had to go down the well to carve them. That’s good limestone, so it would have taken some time. They would have had to do it by candle or lamp light, and the well would have had to be empty.’
Sage studied the carved shapes, brushing more mud off the stones. Curves would have been much harder to carve than straight lines; someone had gone to a lot of trouble to put them in a circle around the well. ‘I’ve never heard of a well being decorated like that. Maybe it’s for luck, or some sort of religious blessing.’ Sage called Elliott over to show him the picture. ‘Or possibly the stones were carved before they were used for the well,’ she speculated. Then her memory threw up an image. ‘I think there might be something similar on a beam inside the cottage. Over the fireplace.’
Elliott stepped forward. ‘Can we get a copy of that photo?’
‘Sure.’
‘Good idea. Could you send it to my work email, please?’ Sage considered the engineer’s words. ‘You said “good limestone”. What did you mean?’
‘Definitely not quarried on the Island.’
She reached for her project bag, and unfolded the laminated 1866 map of the area. ‘The old abbey, here, was broken up after the dissolution of the monasteries.’ She tapped the map. ‘Apparently, the site’s completely cleared now, but a lot of the local buildings have some of the blocks. I wondered if some of the stone for the cottage came from the abbey.’
‘That could be it.’
‘So maybe it was already carved, like I said.’
‘I doubt it, this isn’t fine work.’ Turpin shrugged. ‘Empty it out and have a look. There’s a contractor, Rob Greenway. He’s a caver, and he also digs and drills wells. Give him a ring. He can dig out that lot quicker, and probably more safely, than you can. But no more exploring. Just put out a tarp next to the well and Rob will bring the fill up for you.’ He pulled a colourful scarf from a pocket, and wound it around his neck. ‘It’s cold, isn’t it?’
Sage knelt down to examine more of the symbols. ‘These carvings don’t look ecclesiastical, they’re just deep scratches. They look like folk symbols, superstitious shapes for good luck. They would be well worth another look.’
Elliott bent over the image on Turpin’s phone. ‘I’ll look them up, see if I can find anything similar on a database.’
‘We’ve got dead bodies, weird carvings and ghosts,’ Sage said. ‘I’m a scientist. I just want to work out what happened here. People are already telling me the house is haunted.’
Turpin smiled. ‘Dead bodies, spooky carvings, old houses. Of course it’s haunted. Or it will be, if you go down the well and it collapses on you.’
* * *
An hour after Paul Turpin left the excavation, Sage was surprised to see Judith Bassett carrying out a tray of tea and biscuits. She handed it to Sage. ‘I’m sorry about yesterday. I just saw the well, and Chloe – I didn’t want to make her sad or frightened. The idea of those poor people down there, it upset me.’
Sage smiled, put the tray down on a worktable. ‘We understand. It must be incredibly unsettling to find bodies in your garden, especially with the other stresses you are under.’
Elliott stuffed his phone into his pocket and took a mug, nodded his thanks, then turned back to cleaning pottery.
‘He doesn’t say much, does he?’ Judith said quietly, handing Sage the second mug.
‘He’s very focused. He’s doing a PhD, and takes it very seriously.’ Sage could see Elliott turn to Steph. She immediately came over, wiggling her fingers in her nitrile gloves.
‘Ooh. Tea.’ Steph wrapped her hands around the mug. ‘Thank you, my hands were freezing in that water. I’m washing off pottery,’ she explained. ‘Some of it’s late Tudor, which is quite unusual for this part of the Island. Normally we’d get this quality of finds at big sites like manors and churches.’
‘Have you found anything new?’ Judith looked across at the tables where trays were laid out with finds. ‘No more bodies, hopefully.’
Sage answered. ‘Well, nothing we’ve found suggests a third person. It looks like one baby and one adult, probably female. The skull is neither classically male nor female, but the bits of pelvis we found suggest the remains of an adult female.’
‘So a mother and baby?’
‘Maybe. We’ll be able to tell more when we have the rest of the pelvis.’ Sage sipped her tea. ‘The sixteenth century was a time of high infant mortality, deadly diseases. Maybe the well was useless; the surveyor said it was very salty. So in an emergency, people might have used a disused well to dispose of bodies, although it seems unlikely.’
Steph chimed in. ‘People cared deeply about burial practices, they still do.’
Judith shuddered in the fresh breeze. At least weak sunshine was breaking through the clouds. ‘It’s very sad.’ She wrapped her scarf more tightly around her neck.
‘But a long time ago,’ said Sage. ‘Steph, where’s that jug piece you found?’
Steph showed Judith the handle of a jug she was cleaning up. ‘Some of these pots were imported from Europe. Good quality. The owners of the cottage were prosperous.’
Judith smiled faintly, but didn’t look interested. She followed Sage over to the awning as a few spots of rain fell, and nodded at Sage’s stomach. ‘This can’t be an easy job for you, being pregnant.’
Sage shrugged. ‘Baby’s bones are always sad, but this all happened four hundred odd years ago, going by pottery. Some pieces date from around the middle of the fifteen hundreds.’
‘How far along are you?’
Sage felt slightly uneasy at the probing. She wasn’t sure how she felt about the pregnancy herself. ‘Six months.’
Judith smiled a little more warmly, moved her hand as if to touch Sage’s curved belly, but seemed to think better of it. Sage stepped away anyway. She hated it when people thought pregnant women were public property.
‘I remember being pregnant with Chloe. James and I were so happy. Just starting out together, selling our flats and buying a house together, planning a wedding.’
A stab of yearning shot through Sage, quickly suppressed. Marcus. ‘The father and I… we don’t live together.’
Sage was aware that the students were listening, then Steph turned her head away. ‘No, it’s fine. He didn’t want a baby. It’s my choice.’
Judith turned to go into the house. ‘Don’t get too cold.’
* * *
When Sage put her bag in the van Elliott followed her.
‘I was wondering if I could get a lift into Newport?’ He looked back at the cottage. ‘Steph’s finished already.’
‘I’m sorry, Elliott. I’m going straight home to Ryde. Do you have my spare keys?’
He rummaged in his jeans pocket. ‘They’re in my bag, I can get them—’
She waved a hand. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get them tomorrow. Sorry about the lift.’
‘No problem.’ He nodded to her and turned away. ‘See you.’
The van started first time, and she drove around the village to get onto the harbour road. Most of the houseboats had their lights on, and there was a drift of woodsmoke over the road from a couple of them. It was only twenty minutes or so drive to Ryde, but the road was narrow and wound through several villages. This was the Island life she liked; the different communities had their own character. Her mother had often said that each village was like its own island. Many older people only went onto the mainland once or twice a year. The isolation was one of the reasons Yana, Sage’s mother, had wanted to leave, but her father was an Islander and missed it. He wasn’t just an Islander, he was a West-Wighter, from a tiny hamlet called Five Houses.
Sage slowed down to join a couple of cars following a tractor. Finally she came over the hill and glimpsed the sea again, before driving down to Ryde seafront. Her flat overlooked the sea beyond the hovercraft terminal, and it was a relief to park beside her own car and trudge up three flights of stairs to the flat. This isn’t going to be easy when the baby is born. She shouldered her work bag for the last climb.
Marcus was there, of course. Sprawled on her bed, leafing through her five-year diary.
‘There you are.’ He stood up, naked and unembarrassed because his body was beautiful. It should be, the amount of time and money he spends on it. He kissed her hungrily, insistently, and it sparked an immediate response in Sage that made her annoyed at herself.
‘I thought we split up,’ she grumbled. ‘I remember throwing you out.’ She pushed him away, his skin making her hands tingle.
‘Lovers’ tiff.’ He lay on his back and picked up the diary again. ‘Is this some kind of scoring system? Am I doing well?’ He grinned up at her with an air of possession rather than humour. ‘Silly question. Why are you still dressed?’
She snatched the diary off him. ‘That’s my menstrual cycle. Was my menstrual cycle, which you saw to. Does your wife know you’re here?’
The grin slipped. ‘She’s at her mother’s. Her sister’s got some family crisis. So we have all night together.’
Sage took off her fleece and walked to the window. Her top-floor flat had a good view over the Solent, and ferries and ships passing between the Island and the south coast of the mainland. She had been born on the Island but her parents had moved to Hampshire before she started secondary school. Years at university at South Solent had left her feeling like a stranger when she was home. At least here she could see boats constantly coming and going; it made her feel less stranded. She leaned her forehead against the cold glass for a moment.
‘Marcus, I was serious. This has got to stop. Before the baby comes.’
‘Why?’
Sage turned to look at her lover, displaying himself on the bed. It was as if he was always saying ‘look at me’. He seemed genuinely puzzled. ‘It’s just sex, and great company.’
For you, maybe. The emotion she had carried, ignored by Marcus, was fading. ‘I need to get a real life, a real partner one day. Now I need to concentrate on the baby.’
He spread his hands out. ‘I think we have something special. Come here.’
She hugged the fleece to her as a barrier against his charm. ‘I want to live with someone, bring up my baby with someone. I’m twenty-nine, Marcus. At my age you were married. You had had your first baby.’ The word caught in her throat as she remembered the tiny, fragile bones in the well.
‘This is just the hormones speaking. Christ, Fliss thought about chucking me out at the end of the last pregnancy, she was so ratty.’
As usual, he reduced everything down to something simple, like her hormones, like her job. ‘And then you met me.’
‘Exactly. And that worked out well, until, you know…’ Until she realised he had gone back to his wife.
‘Marcus, I’m not joking. It’s over.’
He stood, walked over to her and stopped mere inches away. She could feel the warmth of his body fill the space between them. His face was hard, angry. ‘Tell me you don’t want me. Push me away.’
All their encounters usually ended on his agenda, in bed. This time she stepped back. ‘I mean it, Marcus. I need to end this. If you stay, it’ll just be me and the baby waiting for the next hour you can spare from your real family.’ She looked down at her hands. ‘I think I’m happier being on my own than just having the occasional moment when you can spare it, the constant excuses.’
He turned, pulled on his jeans, then his shirt, and started doing up the buttons. ‘You are serious, aren’t you?’ His voice changed. ‘Did you meet someone?’
‘Look, we’ll always be friends—’ she stopped mid-sentence. They were never friends.
‘No, we won’t.’ Marcus walked over again, disturbingly close, and as she dropped her eyes she could see hair poking out of the top of his shirt. His scent was intoxicating and she had to resist swaying against him, despite his aggressive stance. His hand touched her hair, pulled one dark curl lightly through his fingers. ‘You and me, we’re not friends, we’re lovers. If you had got rid of the baby—’
She wondered if the baby could hear his words, hear the acid in his tone. ‘I didn’t want to.’ Her voice was more sure than she was. The pregnancy had cleared away the certainty she had had about the future: career, house, relationship.
‘Don’t I have any say?’ His voice was soft now but she wasn’t fooled. ‘I love you, Sage, in my own way.’
‘It’s not down to you, Marcus. It’s really over.’
He shrugged, half smiled. ‘Fool yourself if you like. You wait until the baby comes. You’ll want me then, and I’ll be here.’
‘You are so arrogant.’
He turned at the doorway. ‘That’s what you like about me.’
There was a bit of truth in that. He was so confident, so sure of her, it had been attractive. But he had responded to her refusal to have an abortion at first with reasoned argument, then with anger. She didn’t want that hanging over her baby. ‘It’s my life, Marcus.’
‘You can fight it, but I’ll win in the end. We’re perfect for each other.’ He opened the door and she ran after him, catching him before he closed the door.
‘Key.’
‘Really?’ He twisted the key off the ring he kept at work, so his wife wouldn’t find it. He pressed it into her hand, his fingers warm against her palm. ‘You’re determined tonight.’
‘I have to be.’
‘And I thought you were pleased to see me when you came in.’
She remembered how pleased she had been, and warmth spread up into her face. She hoped her olive complexion and the low light in the hallway concealed it as he headed down the stairs.