‘Have you found out any more about the identity of the people in the grave?’ she asks.
‘Various theories have been put forward.’ Lucas walks as he talks, picking up a discarded trowel and handing it to someone, tidying a loose coil of cable and generally fussing. ‘We’ll know more once we can open the coffin and see what grave goods are with the body. That the uppermost remains are those of someone convicted of a crime of some sort seems to be the most likely explanation, but there is another factor that we are looking into.’
‘Something to do with the way they were executed, or who they were?’
‘Both, in effect. Turns out pinning victims of burials in place—whether they were alive at the time or not—was not the only reason tenth-century lake dwellers might have dropped such a huge flat stone on top of them. It was common practice—so Molly assures me, and I’ve never yet had cause to doubt her research—in the burial of a witch.’
Tilda feels a shiver that has nothing to do with the snow chase down the length of her spine. Without really knowing she is doing it, she takes hold of the bracelet nestled in her coat pocket. She catches Dylan’s eye. He looks serious for once.
‘Uncle Illtyd might support that theory,’ he says quietly, more to Tilda than to Lucas.
Although it is still early in the afternoon, the winter sky is filling with new snow clouds, and the dwindling daylight is already causing difficulties for the diggers. It is decided to fire up the generator and switch on the lights. There is a fair amount of running around and shouting. More than once Lucas instructs anyone not directly involved in lifting the remains to move away from the trench. After a couple of failed attempts, the generator powers up, its engine noise thudding through the still air, black smoke chugging from its exhaust. A switch is thrown and the overhead lights flare into action, casting their intense artificial brightness directly down onto the grave and its surrounding area. Tilda blinks, shading her eyes as she steps a little farther away. She is torn between wanting to see what is going on and not wanting to interrupt the functioning of the lights. She stamps her feet to ward off the cold that is beginning to penetrate her boots and thermal socks. She is aware of a dizziness, and knows that this time it has nothing to do with low blood-sugar levels or tiredness. It is the grave, or rather, whatever, whoever, is in the grave, that is causing her to feel light-headed, to feel somehow distant from the people around her. She is able to hear things above the thrumming of the generator. She can make out the heavy lapping of the water upon the shore, the chattering of a squirrel in a nearby tree, the beating wings of swans out on the lake. All her senses appear to be heightened. She is able to smell not only the acrid diesel fumes of the engine, but the mixture of sweat and body spray coming from the diggers as they work, the musty dampness of the branches of a large oak to her right, and the pungent odor of the ancient earth that is being, inch by inch, ever more disturbed. She can almost taste the moist, cold air on her tongue. The juddering of the generator, the stomping footsteps of those workers, the slight fizzing that runs down the metal supports of the arc lights—all these vibrations pass through her body.
And then come the visions. At first she sees just a jumping of the sharp-edged shadows cast by the lights, so that the abrupt change between the floodlit ground, tinged orange, and the cool blue of the natural snow, seems to jitter and shake. Then there are glimpses of movement away in the middle distance, as if shy creatures are breaking cover and darting across the wintry ground. And next come the swirling shapes, twisting and changing, in the sky above Tilda’s head. Looking up, she can see figures forming and reforming, as if made from clouds that have fallen from the heavens to a height barely above the tallest of the trees at the edge of the meadow. Tilda gasps as a figure swoops low, diving at her and then flying away at the last moment. The form is vague, indistinct, its limbs dissolving into vapor as it passes. Then comes another and another.
Dylan has noticed something is wrong. ‘Tilda?’ he asks. ‘What’s the matter?’
She does not answer him. She cannot answer him. For now, she can see a dark shape beginning to rise from the open grave. Lucas, Molly and two more archeologists kneel in the trench, and between them they lift the great slab of stone that had been holding down the bones of the deceased. They stagger under its weight as they lift it and tip it up on end, to one side of the body. Now, the skeleton is exposed. From where she stands, in the harsh lighting, Tilda can clearly see the broken bones of the corpse, its limbs lying at impossible angles, its skull tipped back, its jaw smashed, its brow cracked. And she sees the dark mass rising up from it, pulsating and undulating, and she knows that she alone can see it as it settles into the now-familiar form of the fearsome ghost that has been haunting her. It turns its gory face toward her, and Tilda watches as a hideous grin stretches across its shattered features.