The Digger's Rest (23 page)

Just as they were about to embark on the
first day of this new venture, a man’s voice called out to them,
then another. Mitch turned to find Malcolm and Deck Farthing
rushing toward them, “Dr. Bramson! Dr. Bramson!” and he
stopped.

When the two young men got close enough to
lower their voices, they stopped and stood in front of him, looking
at each other to see who would speak first. Malcolm took the lead.
“Dr. Bramson, it looks like you’ll have two Farthings on your dig,
if you don’t mind. We can start tomorrow.”

Mitch couldn’t have been more surprised. He
had expected the adventure-hungry Deck ‘Can we talk about Red
Indians’ Farthing to volunteer, but he would never have expected
the sturdy Malcolm ‘I’m the older brother Farthing’ to join the
camp, but he was very pleased to have them both, nonetheless.

“
Capital!” Mitch said, sounding like
Dr. Watson from an old Sherlock Holmes mystery and shaking both
their hands to welcome them into the fold. “Seven A.M. tomorrow
morning then, unless it rains, then the next day. We’ll see you at
dinner, guys,” he said and waved as they headed out the door. The
two Farthings looked at each other, a worried look coming over
their faces at the same time, because, as it can be with close
brothers, they were thinking the same thing…
Ivy!

***

The midday sunshine made the first day’s trip
to the site a pleasant one. The lushness of the English countryside
as they headed out of the village was breathtaking and after they
turned off the paved road onto the narrow unpaved Devon lanes, both
Simon and Sandrine were astonished to learn that the lanes were
only single car wide and that every time a car came in the opposite
direction, one or the other of them would have to pull into a small
side area to let the other pass.

Simon, having never once in his life been out
of New York City, felt like he’d dropped into a mid-19th century
novel about English rural life as they drove past enormous wheels
of hay idly dotting the crop fields on both sides of the lane.

He knew so very little about real life,
having lived his up until that point through television shows,
films and books. The field and farm house scenes they passed took
him back to being twelve years old again, eating stale Pop Tarts
and watching Joseph Lousey’s film ‘The Go-Between’ in the common
room of Holy Family in the middle of a night when he couldn’t sleep
because a couple of the regular school kids had been particularly
cruel to him that day.

He had been reading John Knowles’ ‘A Separate
Peace’ on a bench in the warm sunshine of the playground when the
looming of long shadows came from over his shoulder, blotting the
sun from the pages of his book; a rough nudge to his shoulder.
“Simple Simon, Simple Simon,” he heard from behind him; then
another harsher voice, “Magnet bait.”

When he didn’t react and tried to draw away,
one of the boys pushed him hard and he tumbled off the bench, his
brace getting caught in the table legs as he fell, twisting his
ankle. He’d skinned an elbow and the palm of one hand trying to
break his fall.

Covering his face with his other hand, he
didn’t see the foot come swinging at him, landing in the small of
his back so hard all he saw was blackness. He just stayed down
trying to absorb the pain until it went away and they left him
alone, calling back over their shoulders to him, “Freakazoid!” and
laughing

Back in England, he wiped his eyes as they
passed more hedgerow-lined fields, some with cows, some with more
hay rolls, the pain remembered forcing him to drift back again into
safety, eyes still open to the rolling fields in front of them,
imagining a dashing, handsome, masculine Alan Bates in a long green
MacIntosh duster like Mitch’s with matching green Wellington muck
boots, striding across the green field to meet Julie Christie,
luminous and ethereal in a wide-brimmed sun hat and flowing white
gossamer gown; gazing at each other languidly as they touched hands
in the sunlight; believing in his heart that if he looked closely
he would see them behind every farmhouse with hand painted signs
reading, ‘Fresh Devon Cream, tea served daily.’

“
Earth to Simon,” Mitch called back
from the driver’s seat. His physical ears heard him, but somehow
his mind heard words from an earlier time, at a lunch table at Holy
Family.
You have my word, I will never let
anyone hurt you ever again,
Mitch’s voice echoed in
his memory, and he came back to the present.

“
Earth to Simon! You alright back
there, bud?” Mitch called out again.

“
Yes, sir…” Simon said, smiling shyly
and blushing, relieved to be back again where he was and who he was
with, safe and cared for. “…just daydreaming, I guess.”

When they finally arrived at the entrance to
what used to be the Crane Estate, they saw what was left of it and
knew that the fish company and the other purchasers meant business.
Lord Cotswold had gotten to Jack just in the nick of time.

What had once been a lavish, ancient baronial
estate lay in ruins before them. There were bull dozers everywhere
working their way through a maze of dirt mounds and the deep
gullies they left in their wake in their attempt to level the
area.

As the company of diggers turned into the
access road, they could see parcels of land on both their left and
right, divided into huge tracts by barbed wire and caution tape,
each tract bearing a different sign; ‘Johnstone Land Development
Company’, or ‘Coming Soon a New Tesco To Go’, and the largest of
all, ‘New Home of the King Neptune Fish & Seafood Company,
Ltd.’

Once past all of the signs of modern
progress, the group came upon a still wild area that they assumed
was theirs. It was fenced off, not by their own doing, but by the
fencing put up by their nearest neighbors. They continued to drive
down the access road deep into a wooded area until they came to
what looked like a small, very crude parking area, little more than
packed down weeds and mud.

It was Mitch’s idea that when the new owners
of the surrounding tracts were surveying the area, they flattened
this small area for their own trucks and brush clearing tractors.
The road stopped there for them, but they could see a narrow
footpath that led ahead from where the parking area ended.

Mitch’s first thought was for Simon. Neither
Mitch nor Lady Cotswold had any idea how far down the footpath they
would have to walk before they’d come to the ruin and he worried
about how well and how long Simon could navigate the underbrush and
the path before it got to be too much for him.

The idea of Simon falling nagged at him the
whole time he was unloading the bags from the car. Finally, he
concluded that, for the time being, it might be best for Simon if
he didn’t treat him like a cripple, so he might not feel like one.
In the end he decided that if it did get too much for Simon to
navigate, the worst that could happen would be that Mitch might
have to carry him back to the car at the end of the day and then
pay one of the dozer men to clear a path overnight to make it wide
enough to drive the car through to the site; a small price to pay
for Simon’s security.

They entered the knee-high bracken and ferns
of the path entrance; the atmosphere darkening with each step they
took as the sun was increasingly blocked out by the enormous boughs
outstretched overhead from trees hundreds of years old, if not
more. And then there was the silence, no birds, no movement,
nothing but the cool shadowy dampness of the deepening forest that
surrounded them, like a cool dark womb of nature.

Mitch kept an eye on Simon, shortening his
gait to make sure he was never more than arm’s length from Simon’s
shoulder, just in case he had to act quickly. Simon kept an eye on
his Walk-O-Meter so he could record the distance from the entrance
to the path until they reached their final destination, fifty feet,
one hundred feet, five hundred feet.

Just as his meter hit one thousand feet,
Mitch called out excitedly, “I can see it ahead, an entrance to
another clearing,” Everyone looked where he pointed, craning their
necks to get a glimpse of their quarry; an opening another two
hundred or so feet ahead of them. They could see part of a large
stone structure illuminated by long beams of light coming through
the gaps in the tree branches over head.

Like a hound dog who’d just spotted a
partridge in the brush, Mitch broke into a trot, quickly moving
ahead of the others. What he saw when he got there astonished him,
a pure, unspoiled ruin; structured in the motte-and-bailey style of
the early Middle Ages; more like a compound than the single
dwelling the aerial shots he had seen led him to believe.

Although most of what might be called outer
buildings had been reduced to little more than rubble over the
centuries, walls fallen, or knocked over, becoming almost
indefinable under centuries of moss and underbrush, the remaining
entry gate took his breath away, making his pulse quicken as he
stood there, his mouth gaping open; two once magnificent stone
towers stood before him, dwarfing him in their shadows.

Set about thirty feet apart, they had clearly
formed what was the entrance to the outer security wall, having
once had a bridge between the two, around twenty feet above ground
level to connect them.

The tower on his right was the most intact,
having lost only what he estimated to be a quarter of its height to
damage; originally giving it a height of two hundred feet, he
estimated. The tower on his left had suffered the ravages of time
more significantly, with only a half or less of it still
standing.

As he stood looking at it with childlike
fascination, it reminded him of a sandcastle just after it had been
hit by a low wave of mostly sea spray and foam. The way the rays of
light hit it threw him into a visualization of its former glory,
smoothed with a thick coating of limestone paste and painted to a
brilliant, blinding sheen with whitewash, richly colored flags
bearing the crests of its noble house adorning the outer walls,
rippling in the summer breeze.

He could almost hear the sound of horses’
hooves and the clamor of armor as its defenders passed through the
gates. He could smell the mixture of scents, horse and cattle, hay,
fire and roasting meats. Within seconds his mind had taken him
farther than it ever had before because, not only was he
visualizing it abstractly in his mind, he began to visualize
himself in it, part of that scene.

He could feel his long hair blowing in the
breeze, the weight of the armor on his body. He touched his face
and could feel the coarseness of a week’s growth of beard. He
looked down at his hands; they were rough and dirty with small
cuts. Then realized he was on a horse, waiting for the iron-bound,
spiked wooden gate to raise itself, allowing him to enter.

He looked up again and saw a gathering
of people lining up along the front of the wall, waving and
cheering for him, the women with elaborate hairstyles and veils,
colorful string drawn bodices and full, long skirts; the men in
rough cloth tunics with thick leather belts; and the gate began to
move. His chest filled with pride as he anticipated the greeting he
knew would be waiting for him beyond that gate.
I’m home,
he thought. A voice spoke and he was
returned.

“
Wow!” Simon was staring up at it, his
mouth wide open. Lady Madeline was next to him and Sandrine next to
her.

“
It’s beautiful,” Lady Madeline, said
breathlessly with her hand on her chest, staring up at the
towers.

Simon stepped back about twenty-five feet,
took out his camera and started clicking away. “Dr. Bramson,” he
said, “Stand by the big tower so I can get a shot. Lady Cotswold,
you can be next, then all of you, please.”

Mitch did as he was asked, as did Lady
Madeline and Sandrine, all of them more than happy to be pictured
with their discovery. Then Simon took out his camcorder. This was
an event to be captured as they walked between the two towers into
the main area.

“
What about you?” Sandrine asked Simon.
He just shrugged and blushed.

“
I’m not much for having my picture
taken,” he said shyly.

“
Nonsense. You’re as much a part of
this as any of us, Dr. Holly,” Mitch said looking him straight in
the eye, taking the camcorder from him and backtracking to get a
shot of Simon; but waiting until he was almost under the towers
before he began shooting so Simon wouldn’t have to watch himself
limp in later viewings.

When he was done, Mitch walked over to him.
“And it’s your entry into the real world of what we do. Be proud of
yourself, my Simon. I am, and Jack would be, too. You’ve earned
it,” Mitch said quietly, smiling at Simon as he handed him back his
camcorder and giving him a good squeeze on the shoulder.

The area inside the tower entrance was about
five hundred square feet, an entry courtyard; the remains of the
main structure behind it. The perimeter being laid out by the
foundation stones ranging from five feet high to barely visible
beneath the various heights of grass. Mitch counted at least ten
distinct rooms carved out of the interior, also with their
remaining walls ranging from nearly three feet to almost
indistinguishable from the ground around them.

As they each surveyed the area in their own
ways, they seemed to gravitate and wander in separate directions.
Simon and Sandrine seemed to like looking up, Lady Madeline looking
down and Mitch, as was his way, scanning around for a panoramic
view.

Suddenly, there was a loud thud and an
UUUmmmpphhh mixed with the sound of rustling grass. Mitch, Lady
Madeline and Sandrine all looked toward the sound and saw Simon on
the ground, face down. Mitch ran to him. “Simon, are you alright?”
he shouted, helping him back up to his feet.