9

Friday 29th March

Sage brushed her wet hair out of her eyes. It was a bit drier under the awning they had put up, but not much. The wind fled from the sea and whistled between Bramble Cottage and the hedge. It fluttered papers and chased plastic pots across the two tables she had put up. They now had forty-six adult bones, including a skull, half a jaw and most of a shattered pelvis, arranged in one container. The baby’s bones fitted into the large sandwich box: half a femur, the arm bones, most of the skull, three ribs, a clavicle, a few fragments of one tibia and a number of vertebrae.

Professor Yousuf Sayeed was looking through the finds with Steph. The forensic anthropologist had jumped at the chance to come to the Island, and Sage knew him well. He had been one of her lecturers a decade before.

‘These are remarkably well preserved,’ Yousuf said. His camera flashed. ‘So often we lose infant remains altogether. Do you know if they were dropped in the water itself, or just buried in the loose debris after it was filled in?’

‘We assumed they were covered along with the infill. The bodies were only a few metres down.’

He turned a tiny vertebra over with forceps. ‘If the bodies were dropped in the bottom of the well the water may have allowed them to float up through what would be liquid mud. I’m surprised at the condition of the bones. Of course, the water is quite alkaline here, which would aid in preservation.’ He turned the arm bones over. ‘You saw the scratch on the left humerus, I suppose?’

‘No. Where?’ Sage and Steph leaned over the sandwich box, and Elliott looked up from his sieving and sorting.

There was an incised line, deep into the tiny humerus, close to where it would have joined the shoulder. Sage felt her own baby flutter like a bird. ‘Why would someone injure an infant?’ She felt sick. It was bad enough to imagine the baby drowning, let alone wounded. She touched a hand to her bump.

Yousuf glanced down at her belly before he answered. ‘It might not be ante-mortem. Maybe someone wanted to disarticulate the body to conceal it, and changed their mind. Dropped it down the well.’ He shrugged. ‘In forensic work we see quite a few concealed or discarded babies.’

Elliott, who had come over to the table, pointed at a piece of the small jawbone. ‘We were wondering about the nick in the jaw. I thought I might have scratched it getting it out, but Sage thinks it could be a cut.’

Sage pointed it out. ‘It could be deliberate, I suppose.’

‘It is very straight. And there’s something else,’ Yousuf said. ‘The bones of the skull aren’t completely fused, they are separate plates. Most of the bones are poorly ossified. This was a baby who died very soon after, or at birth. From the last month of pregnancy to a month after term, shall we say.’

‘Oh, God.’ Steph pressed her hand to her mouth for a moment. ‘Was it even born, Professor? I mean, it might have been inside the mother. Could it be a coffin birth?’

Yousuf went over to the adult’s bones. ‘That’s a reasonable idea; post-mortem foetal extrusions are incredibly rare, but possible. But I don’t think so in this case.’

‘Post-mortem whats?’ Elliott’s face was screwed up.

Sage explained. ‘During decomposition, gas and fluid build-up in the abdomen can put pressure on an unborn foetus and force it out of the mother.’

Elliott looked nauseated. ‘But that isn’t what happened here.’

‘The skeletons were found separately, the baby wasn’t close to the adult pelvis.’ Yousuf pointed to the adult bones. ‘This was unlikely to be the mother of the child. If a woman had gone through a full, or almost full-term, pregnancy and birth, I would expect dorsal pubic pitting in this area. There are no grooves that I would associate with pregnancy or childbirth. This is probably a female skeleton, but I can’t be sure. And obviously I can’t guess at the gender of the baby.’ He sighed. ‘You possibly have a woman with someone else’s child buried here. I doubt if you would get useable DNA, and the cost would be prohibitive, but that would be the easiest way to confirm it.’

Steph leaned forward. ‘Can’t we be certain of the adult’s gender?’

He shrugged. ‘Eighty, ninety per cent maybe. It’s not a typical pelvis for a female, and we can only be sure in ninety-five per cent of cases anyway. The femur also suggests an unusual height for a female of the era. Maybe five nine or ten. It’s an anomalous picture.’

Elliott, who towered over the group, brushed the dirt off another tiny bone and laid it on the table with the baby’s bones. ‘Here’s a collar bone – I mean a clavicle. Now we have both.’

Yousuf gently arranged it into position, then leaned forward to look more closely. He picked up the dry clavicle already in place. ‘You know, I think there was a more extensive injury. Let me show you.’ He picked up a ruler used for scale. ‘You are a small baby. If I cut on this plane, in a slashing motion—’ He placed the edge of the ruler against Sage’s collar bone diagonally onto the top of her arm. ‘Here, we find a cut on the humerus, a deeper one in the clavicle, and another nick terminating at the jaw. A single slash.’

The four stood under the flapping tarpaulin of the awning, taking in the awful implications of Yousuf’s words. Sage struggled with the image his words created, and looked at Steph and Elliott, who were both silent. She was the first to speak. ‘Thanks, Yousuf, I really appreciate this.’

‘Anything else while I’m here?’

‘Any estimate as to the woman’s age?’ Sage pointed to the skull. ‘I’m thinking mid-thirties.’

Yousuf held up the skull for Steph to see, ever the professor. ‘This area, the spheno-occipital synchondrosis, is fused in ninety-five per cent of people by twenty-five.’ He traced the line with his finger. ‘How would we further examine the skull?’

Elliott leaned over Steph’s shoulder. ‘We could score the sutures for the degree of fusion to get an estimate of the age.’

‘Exactly. It’s much easier to estimate the age of young adults but my feeling is this—’ he ran his finger down the lines wiggling across the skull, ‘suggests someone over thirty rather than under. See? These sutures are smoothing out altogether. Thirty to forty, maybe more.’ He looked again at the pelvis. ‘I think female, on balance, but it’s unusual. Maybe there’s something pathological. I have an idea. Send me photos of the bones and I’ll look into it. Anything else?’

Sage shook her head. ‘No, we’re— actually, maybe there is something. What do you make of these?’ She scrolled through pictures on her phone. ‘They were carved into some of the stones at the top of the well.’ She handed the phone to Yousuf.

‘Interesting.’ Yousuf peered at the pictures. ‘I have no idea what they are. Probably superstitious or religious. But it’s not really my area.’

‘There are more carved into the beam over the fireplace in the cottage.’

Yousuf looked intrigued. ‘I haven’t seen anything similar before; they are quite elaborate. And curves are harder to carve than straight lines. The man you need to talk to is Felix Guichard – that’s G-U-I-C-H-A-R-D. He’s a social anthropologist based in Exeter; I know him because we both work for the World Health Organization. He loves all these folk symbols, warding off bad luck and so on. Send the pictures to him, see if he recognises them.’

Sage took the phone back and made a note. ‘Is he French?’

‘Not as far as I know. Nice guy, got divorced a couple of years ago if you’re interested.’ He laughed when she frowned at him. ‘OK, OK, back to your burial. Which is fascinating.’

Sage couldn’t stop herself smiling. ‘Can you confirm a date?’

‘Looking at the degradation – although I’ll do a chemical analysis for you on my samples – I think you are safely in the historical area of 1400 to 1800, at first sight. Burial inside the well prevented animal scavenging, weathering, that sort of degradation. The midden may have been high in bacteria and insects, which would have stripped the bones quickly, if they are contemporary with the infill. The archaeology suggests 1500s, maybe a little later, but you know that already. Keep me informed. It’s an interesting case. I’ll inform the Home Office it’s definitely historical.’

Sage followed him to his car. ‘Thank you, Yousuf. Don’t think I’m being completely hysterical, but this place creeps me out. It makes it difficult to be objective. We’re all behaving a bit strangely. Steph’s tearful, Elliott’s in a world of his own. I can’t be as objective as I’d like about the baby.’

‘Of course. It’s an occupational hazard of working with crime scenes, I’m afraid. I do two or three a year, this is your first.’

‘Crime scene? But it’s centuries old.’

‘Something evil was done to that child, and probably to that woman. It’s natural to be appalled, upset. But one thing is certain, and it should give you comfort.’

‘What’s that?’

‘At least the killer is dead and buried.’

* * *

Sage decided to take a walk at lunchtime, to see if she could find the gravestone the pub landlord had mentioned. Steph and Elliott were full of morbid speculations about what had happened to the people in the well. It was understandable but unsupported by the evidence, and it was good to be on her own. Seeing Marcus near the church yesterday had shaken her a bit. She was still attracted to him, still flattered that he was interested, even at more than six months pregnant. She couldn’t shake the idea that he was checking up on her.

She lengthened her stride, her work boots getting purchase on the wet grass of the common. A field left for Banstock village to use for recreation, it was bordered on two sides by a wall of dressed limestone blocks. The Victorian map had shown the site of the old abbey only half a mile away, now levelled, probably the source of the well stones. A low mound towards the south had a few trees on it, rabbit paths widened by dogs and walkers criss-crossing the slopes. Sage thought it was the right size and location for a plague burial. She shaded her eyes from the low sun, which lit up celandines peppering the grass, along with a few early daisies. An older woman marshalled four fluffy dogs on an assortment of extending leads, like a mobile maypole weaving some spring dance.

A footpath sign led through a gateway in the wall from the High Street, and the landscape changed. The ground ran downhill, the scrub trees and bushes giving way to dense oak and beech coppicing maybe two or three hundred years old, a tiny pocket of ancient forest. The path forked into two, and Sage took the less worn one. It meandered, found a muddy patch that might become a stream in wet weather, and disappeared into brambles up the other side of the dip. She saw several fallen trees, one of which appeared solid enough to take her weight, and used it to get halfway over the mire, jumping the rest.

The trees on the other side of the dried-up stream were closely packed, the undergrowth encroaching onto a rough path. The wood was strangely quiet. A few distant calls from robins and blackbirds staking out territory echoed from the common, but she could no longer hear the road.

The crack of a twig underfoot made her jump. Something rustled through the brambles to her left, and she twisted around to follow the sound of scrabbling. It faded away and after a few moments of hearing her own heart beating uncomfortably in her ears, Sage took in her surroundings.

She almost missed the stone. Partially obscured by a fallen bough, the limestone block was half jacketed with green moss. A straight edge caught her eye. She took her camera from her pocket, photographed the greenery in situ, and then started to tug at the branch. It was tied down with brambles and had been partly sucked into the muddy ground. She was sweating despite the cold in the shade, but finally she tore the bough loose and dragged it aside.

The revealed marker leaned back about forty degrees, and she photographed it from different angles with her glove for scale. Then she took a flexible tool from her pocket and started scraping at the vegetation covering the stone. It was difficult to remove, mosses grown onto lichens, some of which could be as old as the carved inscription. Gentle scraping gave way to more vigorous work, and finally Sage could clear out the lines of the writing with a pick. D – A – M gradually emerged from the left-hand side, followed by an O or a C, then Z – E – L. Damozel, the word Dennis Lacey had used? More photographs, then she found a heap of dryish leaves to kneel on, to tackle the thinner words underneath. Isabeau. Finally Deschassee. There was no date, no cross. DAMOZEL ISABEAU DESCHASSEE. She explored the ground around the stone, looking for any other evidence of the burial, like a sunken area or a grave mound.

‘Who the hell are you?’

Sage jumped to her feet, spun around at the voice and flinched at the sight of a shotgun. The man holding it was tall and heavy, his checked shirt falling in a curve over his waistband. He scowled from under thick white hair, some of it standing on end. He waved the gun in her direction.

‘Well?’ he snapped.

‘I came on the footpath.’ Sage put a hand up. ‘Don’t point the gun at me, please.’

‘Who are you and why are you trespassing? This side of the stream isn’t common land.’ The man dropped the tip of the gun towards the ground. ‘That’s criminal damage, right there, scraping at the stone.’

Sage stood tall, though her heartbeat was thudding uncomfortably in her ears. ‘I’m Dr Sage Westfield, and I’m from the county archaeologist’s office. Did you know you have a gravestone here?’

‘Damozel? Certainly.’

‘Well, this might be what we call an irregular burial. Do you know anything about this Isabeau?’

The man broke the gun open, and hooked it over his arm. ‘Bessie! Bessie, girl!’ He whistled loudly, which was answered by a bark somewhere in the scrub. ‘Bloody dog.’ He looked at the stone, and bent to read the rest of the cleaned-up inscription. ‘Isabeau. Funny name. I don’t even know what the word underneath means. We knew about the stone of course. My brother and I used to play here as children, dam up the stream, that sort of thing. We thought Damozel was either a suicide or a witch. We made up all sorts of stories about her and her ghost.’

‘Why a witch?’ Sage asked. ‘There weren’t any witch trials here around Banstock, were there?’

He waved up towards the slope and the trees at the top of the rise. ‘Behind the windmill is an area called Witch Hill. Local legend is that witches used to gather in the ruins of the abbey.’

Sage vaguely remembered hearing about Witch Hill as a child. She looked at the stone again in its mossy coat. ‘Then who left a gravestone in the woods?’

His manner seemed to soften and he half smiled. ‘To be honest, my father always thought some servant girl got herself into trouble and topped herself.’

She tapped the stone. ‘This is an expensive grave marker, but in unconsecrated soil. That’s unusual.’

He scowled at her, all warmth gone. ‘Maybe so, but you just can’t come barging onto private land and deface gravestones.’

‘I can assure you, I haven’t damaged it, and I didn’t know this was private land,’ Sage retorted. At that moment an elderly golden retriever bounded up to the old man, then to Sage, frisking around her and splattering her waterproof jacket with mud and hair. She patted the dog, reducing her to ecstasy by scratching the middle of her back.

‘You know dogs.’ The old man looked at Sage appraisingly.

‘My mum and dad have two Labradors.’

‘Bloody idiotic dogs, worse than golden retrievers. They’re even worse than spaniels.’ He appeared to make a decision and held out his hand. ‘George Banstock. Lord of the manor and all that rubbish. So, what put you onto Damozel’s grave?’

She gripped his big hand. ‘Please call me Sage. The landlord of the Harbour Bell pub mentioned it. I’ve been working on Bramble Cottage for the new owners. We found some human remains in an old well, possibly from around the same era as this marker.’

George Banstock raised his eyebrows until they were lost in his bushy hair. ‘Bloody hell. Like a murder?’

‘It would be a very old one. Between 1500 and 1600 we’re guessing, from artefacts found with the bones. Although it might be a plague burial or an accident.’

The lord of the manor stroked his chin. ‘Well, the cottage wasn’t even there until the mid-1500s. My family owned it until about 1860. It was a farmhouse then, and we owned all the land backing onto the church. Actually, this was all part of the original farm; my great-grandfather kept the woodland when he sold the house off.’

Sage ran her hand over the headstone. ‘This style of burial marker is unusual for the period, if indeed it is from the same time as the bodies in the well. Would you mind if I at least do a survey of the site?’

‘Do you want to dig her up?’ George folded his arms, the gun dangling between them. It hadn’t been loaded, she noticed. She wondered why he had been carrying it, although the dog had disturbed a few pigeons.

‘If there’s actually a body here it would be fascinating from an archaeological point of view. That would be for the Home Office to decide, though.’

‘The museum applied once before, but nothing came of it,’ the old man said. ‘There wasn’t any funding. My wife will love all this mystery. We open the house and gardens to the public, and she has a team of volunteers looking into the history of the manor and the village. We have a lot of old documents, you know, though the local records office has most of the originals. All written in gobbledygook Latin.’

Sage stroked the dog’s soft head, as it gazed up at her adoringly. ‘I would love a look, at some point. I have a couple of students with me; they could help look for mentions of Damozel or Isabeau. Or anyone else who went missing at the end of the 1500s for that matter. They are used to reading old English and Latin.’

‘Well, come up to the house and talk to my wife. How about Sunday morning? Her ladyship’s got a meeting of the history society after lunch, so if you come around eleven there’ll be cakes. Give her a ring, we’re in the phonebook.’

Sage watched the old man stamp across the woodland, the dog jumping up until he threw a stick for it. She slid down the slope towards the stream, and waded across the driest patch, her boots sticking in black mud that was over her ankles.

* * *

Sage was just packing the latest finds into the back of the van with Elliott when she saw Nick, this time in black shirt and dog collar under a long coat, approaching the cottage at a brisk walk. She went out to meet him.

‘Hi. Wow, you really look like a vicar today.’

‘Well, I really am a vicar. All dressed up for evensong.’ He looked down at her. ‘Finished for the weekend?’

‘Yes, finally.’ The sky was deepening its blue minute by minute.

‘Are you going home now?’ He seemed tense, his face tight.

‘Not straight away. I have to go to the office first and find somewhere to put all these bags and boxes. We’ve catalogued more than two hundred finds today.’ Sage paused. ‘Is something wrong? I got the impression you wanted to talk to me yesterday.’

‘I went to visit James Bassett at the hospice this afternoon.’ Nick put his hands in his coat pockets. ‘He’s coming home tomorrow. He wants me to pop in after the weekend.’ He looked down, his eyes striated by long, black lashes. It occurred to Sage that he was handsome in a 1950s, knitting pattern way. His lower lip was caught between his teeth for a moment. Then he looked up, straight at her. ‘Do you have a minute?’

‘Of course.’ Sage reached out a hand and touched his sleeve. ‘What’s wrong?’

Nick sighed, then ran his hand through his dark hair. ‘It’s Judith. She’s been going through hell. Her husband is dying, she has a young daughter. I feel like I’m letting them down by not being able to convince Judith to let me and the church help her. The child isn’t responding very well, either. She’s been very aggressive at school. At home too, I suspect. I’m not sure if Judith is coping with her. Judith’s got some nasty scratches – the school mentioned it – and Chloe has thrown a couple of tantrums at school. Have you had a chance to talk to her?’

Sage didn’t know what to say. She turned to get a glimpse of Bramble Cottage, visible through the shrubs in the front garden. ‘Judith? She just seems so broken.’ She hesitated before lowering her voice. ‘Is there anyone else there? I did see the scratches on Judith’s neck.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Nick.

Sage stepped closer, into the lee of his body, keeping her voice low. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed Elliott, scowling at her. ‘Have you talked to her husband about it?’

‘I tried to.’ Nick sighed again. ‘But I don’t want him to worry about her when he isn’t there. Could you have a chat with Judith and James on Monday? You could sit down with them to talk about the well. Maybe gauge her reaction to me visiting him?’

Sage rubbed her upper arms with gloved hands. ‘I’m the last person you should be asking.’ She looked over at the tall figure of Elliott, standing by the van, frowning impatiently at Nick. Over his head, she thought she saw a hint of movement at one of the cottage’s dormer windows. Maybe Chloe. ‘I’m the opposite of diplomatic.’

‘That kind of openness creates trust. If you could just pave the way for me it would help. Tell them I’m interested in the dig, I’m going to help re-inter the remains. Anything that will make it easier for me to visit James.’

‘I’ll try.’ He was so close, Sage was drawn towards his warmth. ‘Nick, I really was sorry to hear about your wife.’

‘I know.’ He managed a crooked smile, then gestured towards her stomach. ‘Are you and the baby’s father getting married? I noticed you weren’t wearing a ring. I could do you a deal, probably get you a discount on the flowers too.’

‘The father’s out of the picture. He never wanted the baby anyway.’

Nick grimaced. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s fine. Really.’ Sage stroked her tummy. ‘I have the baby, that’s enough.’ She smiled at the vicar. ‘In a way the baby has forced me to end a not very healthy relationship with a very egotistical man.’

‘Good for you.’ He paused for a long moment. ‘I’m glad for me, too.’ He half waved at Elliott. ‘Looks like your student wants you.’

Sage didn’t know how to answer. Why was he glad for himself? She looked over at Elliott, who was still waiting by the passenger door of the van, arms crossed. ‘I’m giving him a lift to Newport.’

‘Well, have a great weekend.’

Sage watched his tall shape, a little hunched against the cold, walk away. She felt a pull. Ridiculous. Maybe there was some sort of biological instinct to secure a father for the baby. She shrugged it off and turned to Elliott. Steph was already on her bike, lights on.

‘I’ll be glad when the clocks go forward,’ she said, before she wobbled into the road and disappeared onto the High Street.