6

Davis and Jane reached the pub before anyone else. They each arrived at the same time by purest coincidence. They sat in the corner, beside the fireplace. Davis bought them both a pint of Stone’s, and Jane told him about the accident in Trench Five.

“Oliver looked dead. We all were certain that he was, really, and then he came back to life. Peter was the one responsible, actually. He always seems to know what to do in an emergency.”

“Have there been an unusual number of accidents at the site?”

“There’s no question about that at all. I’ve never seen so many accidents, most of them, I hasten to add, entirely unexciting.”

“Is there—I want to put this correctly. Is there talk about the site?”

“Talk?”

“I don’t even know how to ask this. Is there a certain amount of superstition regarding the site?”

“I’m the last person to know about such things. There may be, among the wage earners, the laboring men, and such. I certainly haven’t heard anything.”

“Tell me what you know about Irene.”

Jane tilted her head and studied him for a moment. “I just spoke to Irene.”

“Yes?” Davis prompted.

“I had already told her everything I knew about you. Which is not, I must say, very much. But she asked me for more information, and I really didn’t know quite what to tell her. She said you were a very interesting man.”

Davis was surprised how happy this bit of news made him. He felt—and this bewildered him—as though he were blushing.

“Because you are, I have to agree, an interesting man.”

“I’m beginning to feel embarrassed.”

“I would have thought you accustomed to all sorts of flattery.”

But this was more than flattery. Jane was, in her somewhat suave, even formal way, making a play for Davis. It was unmistakable. The sideways looks, the accidental, not accidental touching of his wrist with her hand.

Peter knew as soon as he saw the two of them what was happening. Davis had the stupid look on his face, pleasured and self-conscious. And Jane had as close to a come-hither look as she could have managed anywhere outside an actual bedroom.

But before he could absorb any of this, the rest of the crew arrived, even Langton.

Langton was notoriously stingy. He ordered the pints of bitter, and had Skip bring them over to the round tables. Everyone was buzzing with the story of Oliver, who had just been released from York District Hospital. Oliver beamed, delighted to be the dead man who woke up. As Skip told it, the accident had been the funniest event in years. “The place chews people up and spits them out, doesn’t it, Oliver?”

“It chewed us up, all right.”

So that’s the way it’s going to be, thought Peter.

“Here’s to all of you hard workers for all the work you have been doing, and, I’m sure, will continue to do.” Langton raised his pint.

The dozen or so laborers and scientists lifted their glasses, and drank. The bitter tasted like dirty dishwater to Peter.

“You’re all right, aren’t you, Peter?” asked Mandy.

“Why shouldn’t I be?”

“Of course he’s fine,” said Skip. “Enjoying the great hospitality of Mr. Langton. We’re all together, and Mr. Langton wants us to drink our fill tonight, I can tell that.”

Langton beamed nervously. “I thought a pint after work—”

“A pint or two or three after work, said Mr. Langton to himself, and here we all are, thirsty as the Gobi, every last one of us.” Skip gave Peter and Mandy a wink. “So drink up, all, and here’s our gratitude to the bounty of Mr. Langton.”

“Whatever is the matter now, Peter?” asked Mandy softly.

“Nothing,” snapped Peter. “Everything is fine.”

First Margaret. Now Jane.

Langton was smiling very unhappily. Skip had drained his pint, and held up his empty glass like a trophy. Davis and Jane drained theirs. Then there were empty glasses all around. Skip continued his toast, praising Mr. Langton, the most generous employer, the drinking man’s friend. Alf joined in, raising an empty glass with an arm that was blue with tattoos.

Langton dug out his wallet and climbed to his feet with the expression of a man being punished.

Peter drank. The feeling would not go away, that rock in his stomach. It was a leaden lump, and it would not dissolve. Margaret and now Jane. And to think he had considered for a few days that he and Davis could work together. What a fool he had been.

It was much later. Nearly all the Skeldergate team had gone. Alf stopped by Peter’s table and congratulated all of them, including himself, on getting Langton to buy a drink or two for once. “I think he hated doing it, too,” said Alf. He left, waving a snake-decorated arm as he departed into the night.

Peter slouched in a corner. He had switched from bitter, but the Bell’s whiskey had taken no effect, except to make the coins he used to pay for the drink seem heavy, and coated with grease.

Only Skip and Oliver remained of his team, although the pub was crowded, and hazy with smoke. Skip was waggling a finger in the face of a man with huge triceps and biceps. Peter had seen this man unloading carts of swedes and turnips at the market. The swede carrier did not agree with the fine points of what Skip was saying. Oliver glanced from one surly face to another.

Davis deserved to be taught some sort of lesson, thought Peter heavily. Some sort of very definite lesson. Peter had worked his way up, out of Leeds, beginning as a boy in the cellar at Marks & Spencer, stacking boxes and working so hard his back hurt. He had always been thin. But he mustn’t remember those terrible times. Those very bad times. Those were finished forever.

He had grown into an accent that he even, at times, could be proud of. He wasn’t one of these California scientists who get their faces in the magazines. His father had been a newsagent and a hard worker, quick and polite to every stranger, and his mother had lived in America for a time, typing for an insurance company. Good people, nothing to be ashamed of, ambitious, but not the background most scientists have. Davis didn’t have a crooked tooth in his mouth. They were all straight and even possibly capped.

You don’t have to worry anymore, the doctor had said. The future is yours. The past is far away.

There was a sound of unmistakably foul language coming from Skip’s direction.

Just as it happened, Oliver caught Peter’s eye from across the room. Peter struggled past the table before him, and reached Skip just as he pushed the crate lifter, and the crate lifter pushed back.

Skip bellowed. Peter and Oliver together manhandled Skip out of the pub, into the cold night.

“I’ve left my coat!” cried Skip. “You can’t expect me to wander around without my coat in this freezing weather, can you?”

Oliver darted back into the pub for Skip’s coat. As Peter opened his mouth to utter soothing small talk, Skip swore and threw a wide, arcing left hook at a figure lurching from the pub.

The punch connected. Bodies grappled. Peter seized Skip’s leg, and dragged him out of the knot. Oliver joined him, and the two warriors panted, held apart by their mates.

Blood glittered on the pavement, blue in the glare of the streetlight.

“You can’t fucking drink without fucking fighting, can you?” said Oliver, dragging Skip up into the dark. “If it wasn’t for Peter and myself you’d have the fucking police. Best give me a hand with him, Peter, if you would, he’s bloody-minded, and that’s all there is to it.”

Skip swore and muttered, but went along between the two of them.

“Fucking heavyweight champion,” said Oliver.

There was a bitter north wind, and they had to walk all the way to Burton Stone Lane. By the time they had reached Skip’s flat he was furious at himself, and hitting himself great punches in the head.

“Easy, now, Skip,” said Oliver. “You’re pissed and you got into a bit of a fight, but you don’t have to go pounding yourself in the skull.”

Skip calmed himself. “I’m just at this turning here. You won’t leave me, will you? I’ll give you a drink and gratitude. You’ll accept my hospitality, won’t you, Peter?” said Skip. “You’re an archaeologist.” He said this the way he would have said, You’re a hero. “A man who doesn’t mind getting a bit of dirt under his nails and all that. Not like that mousy little man Langton. That man shudders at a fart, and that’s the truth.”

Peter sat in a kitchen crowded with dirty dishes and sports tabloids. The three drank gin out of teacups. “It’s a haunted place, innit, that place?” said Skip. “For those as got a superstitious turn to them.”

“The site?” said Peter.

“I don’t know much about spirits myself. I just do the work. And I don’t believe in spirits, myself, and nobody around there does. But we all know there’s something peculiar about the place, don’t we?”

“But it doesn’t bother us a bit,” said Oliver. “Not even a very little bit.”

“That’s right,” said Skip. “We aren’t afraid.”

The cold cured Peter of the effects of the gin. The lights were turned off the Minster, and it was a great black hole where no stars glittered.

The stairs were dark. It was an effort, he supposed, to save electricity. He reached the door to his flat and found the key.

But the dark was not perfect. There was a light from the flat above. From under Davis’s door. Davis’s flat. Davis. The thought of him made Peter cold.

He was up there now, with Jane.

Davis tossed, breathing hard in his sleep.

The lake again. The water was calm, and barely shrugged in a light wind. For some reason the lake was larger now, and the figure of Margaret so much farther away. He called to her, calling her name.

She was farther away, and this meant that she was receding from him, and that day by day she would grow farther away until he couldn’t see her again.

He called her name, weeping. Come back, he called, come back to me.

She came fast. Her body swelled from a distant dot, sweeping across the water, and was nearly upon him, the flesh flaking from her face as she came, exposing the blackened skull.