The Salisbury Manuscript Read Free Page A

protection, half as disguise. This time he was conscious of moving more surreptitiously than on previous expeditions, conscious of playing a part. He crossed the sunken plateau on top of the hill. Anyone watching would have wondered exactly what business brought him to this isolated place. But there was no one to witness him disappear, like a rabbit wearing a greatcoat, into the hillside.
    On this, his second visit, he operated methodically, lighting the lamp, unpacking the pick and the rest of the things from his bag before examining the interior of the burrow. Only to be disappointed. The sides were composed of chalky soil held back in places by stone slabs. There were no hidden recesses. It was not until he reached the area at the back of the chamber occupied by the skeleton that his straining eyes made out, beneath a veneer of muddy slime, a feature that seemed more promising. Slabs of stone arranged like large irregularly sized bricks.
    The man shifted a portion of the skeleton and scraped away the mud. Soon he was prising away a block that offered the most purchase to his eager fingers. It was difficult work. He was on his knees, leaning forward, encumbered by his black coat. He raised the lamp so that it illuminated the cavity beyond. His heart banged in his chest when the lamp beams reflected off a mound of objects. He reached in and drew out the nearest. It was an elaborate neck-piece or collar, heavy and ungainly to modern eyes, perhaps, but most attractive to him. He placed it respectfully on the dirty ground and fumbled inside the recess for the next item.
    Later he returned all the objects to the cavity and replaced the slab. Then he smeared mud back over the stones. He positioned the skull just below the slab against a smaller stone. He retreated to the outer part of the burrow and sat in thought. Then he gathered up three bones and arranged them near the entrance in the style of the letter H. He could not laugh at his little joke but he did smile slightly. He packed up his implements and doused the lantern.
    He returned to the outside world. The wind had dropped but autumn was in the air. He looked down and observed clots of mud and streaks of chalk on his coat. He wiped them off and then used his spittle and a handkerchief to clean his hands and face as best he could. After that, he retraced his path uphill and so through the back entrance to the hill settlement, across the plateau and down the gentler slope on the western side.
    For the next few weeks he remained in a fog-like state of indecision, wrestling with his conscience. Could he – or rather should he – go back and retrieve the items which he had unearthed in the burrow? The man had always regarded himself as an honest, even honourable, individual. He read widely and thought about things, even though he occupied a position where neither reading nor thinking was expected of him. He argued with himself. Didn’t he have a right to goods which had been uncovered through his own ingenuity and labours? He was depriving no one else by his find. The long-dead had no use for them. If he hadn’t almost stumbled across the cavity sheltered by the base of the beech tree, the objects in the burrow might have rested there until the end of time, to no one’s benefit.
    At one point the man set off with his bag, intending to return to the burrow and take the hoard. But his nerve failed him and he had hardly got to the halfway stage between the city and Todd’s Mound when he turned back, irresolute. He attempted to bend his mind to his daily work in the cathedral and to forget about his discovery below the hillfort.
    But it was in the cloisters of the cathedral that enlightment or guidance of a sort came to him. There was a memorial tablet on the inner wall of the covered walk of the cloisters which included a quotation from Ecclesiastes: and if the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be . He’d