Saxon's Bane Read Free

preserved. There is extensive decomposition down the left side. The left arm has been amputated by the digging machinery but we’ve recovered it from near the spoil pile...” Behind the Professor, one of the workmen looked queasy, and scraped his hand down his trouser as if to rid it of something foul. “There are leather bindings across the torso, and at the wrists and ankles, so we’re probably looking at a ritual sacrifice.”
    “Yes, yes,” the Professor interrupted. “All that would be obvious even to one of your undergraduates. Put the evidence in context. Describe the environment. What are the soil conditions?”
    Clare waited before responding while an ambulance charged down the road, slowing and wailing its urgency when it reached the gawping crowd at the hedge. The policewoman wrenched her eyes off the corpse and spoke into her lapel radio. Clare was close enough to hear a burst of static and the tinny response. “RTA. Two casualties. Been there a while. Messy.”
    Clare stared up at the road, wondering about the injured people as the ambulance was obscured behind Professor Eaton’s back. He’d turned away, muttering at the interruption. The pompous fool had come to an archaeological site in a tweed suit and bow tie. A bow tie , for heaven’s sake. She supposed it was part of the image of the eccentric academic he’d been cultivating since his last television appearance. That would also account for the shiny yellow Wellington boots and the black fedora hat. The rain had stopped but he’d thrown a long coat cloak-like over his shoulders and was carrying a walking cane, the very image of a 1930s academic supervising his minions in their fieldwork. He turned back to her as the sound of the siren faded downhill through the village.
    “The soil conditions?” he prompted, pointing his cane at the body and waving it in circles to emphasise his question.
    Clare squatted in the mud at the bottom of the trench, examining its oozing peat wall. They’d rigged a petrol-driven drainage pump to clear the water but the soil around her was saturated for several feet above the level of the body.
“There are several soil horizons. He’s lying in peat...”
    “Of course, otherwise the humic acid would not have preserved the body.”
    Clare looked up at him, eyes flashing her frustration. Eaton was definitely playing to the crowd. He was also standing quite close to the trench, far enough back to avoid breaking its walls, but looking down in a way that told her he was enjoying the view down her shirt.
    “... although the top layer of soil looks like alluvial silt.”
    Clare twitched her anorak closed over her chest and stood up, grabbing at the edge of the trench for support as her vision spotted and a wave of dizziness hit her. For a moment she regretted missing her lunch in her dash to reach the site, but she’d needed to stake her claim to be the field leader. As soon as ME went, she’d buy a sandwich.
    “Do you think the peat bog is natural?”
    Clare pushed her glasses up her nose and looked round the basin, absorbing the landscape. Upstream from the mill, the bog filled the valley floor between steep, wooded hills. She guessed the woods were ancient, clinging to hillsides that had always been too steep to plough. It would be a good place to go walking or running, about as wild as you could find in rural England. She could imagine quiet, mossy places, the kind that inspired you to pause and inhale a mighty peace.
    “Doctor Harvey?”
    Clare took a couple of deep breaths, blinked away the last of the light-headedness and focused on the immediate surroundings. Here, by the mill, it looked as if some prehistoric landslip had pinched the valley into a wasp waist, forming marsh above and open valley below.
    “I think so. I’d guess this bit of the valley has been bog since the ice age. But the dam and mill pond are most likely medieval.”
    “You sound very confident.”
    “Allingley features in the Domesday