The Digger's Rest (32 page)

“
Wow!” was all Malcolm could muster,
nodding to them, very impressed. “This place is almost a thousand
years old, crazy cool.”

“
Well, ‘men,’ don’t just stand there
like a couple of prize dodos. We have digging to do and I’d like to
see what that piece of granite is,” she said with her hands on her
hips.
Now who was giving orders?
she thought to herself proudly. She still had it.

From there she decided that they would set
Malcolm to poking around with a thin rod to determine how deep the
soil would be before they hit what might be left of the floor. Once
it was determined to be eight inches deep or less, she set him to
digging in the far west corner of the grid with a small shovel and
a hand spade while she and Mitch tried to clear some of the mud
away from the granite piece in the center of the room a hundred
feet away, and they set to it.

Malcolm, being an amateur, took his time, not
wanting to destroy anything he might come across by being too
enthusiastic, a good quality in a young archaeologist, so he
thought it best to only loosen the thick claylike mud with the
shovel rather than actually dig with it.

Once it was loosened, he got down on his
hands and knees and used the garden spade to gently sort through
the clumps of grassy mud until he was sure he was close to floor
level, but he had trouble concentrating. There were too many noises
around him for him to concentrate properly. At first he couldn’t
seem to get rid of some damn fly buzzing around his ears,
irritating him to no end.

It seemed no matter how much or how hard he
swatted at it, the stubborn bastard still came back and was buzzing
around his head in seconds. Then he started hearing a sound in the
trees above his head, like an owl, but not being much of a country
boy, it was hard to be certain, but it sure made him angry.

“
It really must be great living in New
York City. I’ve never been anywhere further than London and a few
camping trips with Mal and Jed to Scotland when we were in our
teens,” Deck said as he walked in a straight line away from where
Simon was looking through the gadget on the tripod and waving to
him with his hand. Simon looked up.

“
Then I guess we’re not all that
different because I’ve never been anywhere outside of Manhattan
until now,” Simon smiled, shrugging and then bent down again to
look through the eye. “To the left, to the left,” he
waved.

Once Deck hammered in the stake and tied the
caution tape to it, Simon came toward him carrying the tripod to
set it down over the second stake, pointing it in the next
direction. “Dr. Bramson seems to be a good sort to work for. I like
him. So how did you get your job with him?” Deck asked, walking
with his tape in another straight line according to Simon’s waving
direction. Simon didn’t know what to say; too innately honest to
make up a suitable lie on the spot, he just decided to tell the
truth.

“
Dr. Bramson gave a lecture at my high
school. I wrote him a thank you note and he came to see me,” Simon
said, letting himself drift again back to that day.

“
Nice! Your family must be very proud
of you,” Deck said, unaware. Simon stopped waving but didn’t stand
up.

“
I don’t have any family, Deck. He
found me in Catholic foster home,” Simon said, then realized he was
embarrassed. Deck stopped and turned around.

“
I’m sorry, Simon, I didn’t mean to
pry.”

“
It’s okay,” Simon replied standing up.
“It is what it is. Dr. Bramson came and took me out of the home and
put me through college, then got me a job with him at the
museum.”

Deck couldn’t help but look down at Simon’s
leg brace then. Simon followed his eyes. “It was broken when I was
a baby and didn’t heal right,” Simon said in advance, rather than
waiting to be asked and bent over to look through the glass
again.

“
I’m sorry, Simon,” Deck said, an
expression of genuine compassion washing over his face, not needing
a map to figure out that Simon’s leg wasn’t just…‘simply broken’
and that he hadn’t just ‘simply’ ended up in alone in a charity
home. It explained a lot of his behavior, his nervousness, his
skittishness around strangers. Deck’s fondness for Simon and
respect for Dr. Bramson immediately increased ten-fold, but he also
knew it was time to change the subject. “Well, I’m glad you came.
This dig is the most exciting thing to happen to me since I got to
see the Queen when she came to Exeter,” he smiled and shrugged,
“Yes, sad, I know,” he laughed.

It took them about two hours of taping while
chatting about everything from Gwen Stefani and the Statue of
Liberty to gangsta rap and MySpace before finishing off the entire
perimeter, not finding anything in particular from an
archaeological standpoint. By then they were both getting hungry
and Simon’s leg was starting to ache from all the walking on uneven
ground, so they decided to take a shortcut through the forest back
to the camp, using the towers as a guide.

Deck deliberately reduced his gait and slowed
his pace noticing that Simon’s limp had gotten worse over the
course of the morning, doing his best to stay close without seeming
to hover. They chatted more as they walked, dodging fallen logs and
clumps of brush as they went; Jerry Springer and CSI.

Simon couldn’t help but notice how
beautiful the light shining through the trees was as he walked, and
the breeze seemed to make him feel sleepy.
More jet lag?
he thought to himself as he
struggled to keep his eyes open; his leg seeming as heavy as…lead,
moving slower.

He looked up towards the sky, at the sun
shining through the trees, trying to stay focused on the towers for
direction. Neither of them noticed the thick strands of ivy working
their way through the underbrush close to Simon’s braced leg;
quickly wrapping themselves around it like a snake, alive and
striking.

Without warning his leg jerked out from
underneath him. The next thing he knew he was falling with the
force of having been pushed, but he wasn’t in the forest, or in
England, and the tug wasn’t the vine on his leg: it was the wet
towel from around his waist. He was fifteen and back at Holy
Family, just come out of the shower. It was pitch black, night. He
showered late at night so no one would see his leg.

The force of the tug on the towel had left
him naked. He felt his wet foot slip and his body tumbling into the
blackness of the stairwell toward the basement. He heard the
booming voice coming from behind him in the dark as he hit the
floor at the bottom with a crashing thud, shaking with cold,
humiliated beyond all imagination. “Hey, let’s see if ya got a club
dick to go with that club foot,” it laughed as he laid there in the
dark, afraid, but even more terrified that they’d turn on the light
and see him that way.

Then he was back, breathless, the ground
coming closer to his face like he was falling down a tunnel;
another sharp jerk, the achy pain he’d had in his upper body all
morning making him wince. He was hanging, suspended in air, his
throat only inches above the sharp pointed end of a jagged, broken
branch from a fallen tree.

“
Whoa, laddie, not so fast,” he heard
Deck’s voice come laughing from behind him as he felt himself being
pulled back to standing. “It wouldn’t do a’tall for me to bring you
back to Dr. Bramson damaged, now would it?” Deck said, his big,
strong hand still holding firmly onto the collar of Simon’s jacket
and shirt.

Helplessly trembling with physical
insecurity, Simon looked up to see Deck’s eyes, warm, friendly
and…protective.

“
Thanks, Deck,” he said, looking back
down at his leg, crimson with embarrassment at trembling like a
frightened child and being so clumsy, seeming so helpless. “I
really should know by now to pay more attention to where I’m
going.”

“
No sweat, mate,” Deck smiled kindly,
“that’s what friends are for,” and put his hand on Simon’s
shoulder. Simon wanted to cry. He didn’t know what to say. He’d
never had many friends before.

***

It wasn’t long before Malcolm gave up
swatting at the fly and just let it have its way, the buzz around
his head becoming more of a soothing hum; then from a hum to being
like a flea in his ear, talking to him, whispering to him. “No,” he
said to it, quietly at first, but it insisted. “No,” he said again.
It was upsetting him now. “No! No! No! No!” he repeated, getting
louder and more upset as he dug until he was almost shouting.

“
What’s going on, Malcolm?” Mitch said
to him, startling him by standing over him. “Did you find
something?”

“
No, sir. It’s just this bloody fly
keeps buzzing around my head and I can’t seem to get rid of it,”
Mal answered, swatting around his head again, looking annoyed. By
then Lady Madeline was standing behind Mitch.

“
Gnats bothering you there, my dear?”
she asked, then without waiting for him to answer went about
spraying the area around him with a can of bug spray. “That ought
to get the little buggers,” she said proudly at being able to come
to the rescue again.

Mitch and Lady Madeline went back to the
granite statue. They had determined by then that it wasn’t really a
statue at all but a monument. As far as they could tell, it had
been toppled over and stood between six and eight feet tall when
erect, but had only managed to uncover its length, not its
depth.

They determined that it was a monument rather
than a statue because, from the six or so inches of depth they had
uncovered before they were interrupted by Malcolm’s gnats, they
could tell it wasn’t a human figure but more an early Christian
Celtic cross; a squared knob on the top of a circle with another
knob protruding from the side of the circle facing them. They
figured that circular part was about eighteen inches in diameter
and each knob was six inches in length; the remaining base that had
been uncovered was at that point seven feet long.

After another half hour of digging and
pushing away mud, they concluded that it was indeed an early
Christian Celtic cross. But that didn’t explain what it was doing
in the center of what was, in essence, a receiving hall. Had the
area they’d been digging in been a chapel or a burial ground one
might have expected to find it where it was, but in the center of
what would have been the main dining area or reception hall? It
didn’t make sense to either of them.

The next test would be to put a date to it.
That might give them something to go on and certainly gave them
much to think about and research. But before they could go further
they heard Malcolm again. “No, no, no, no!” Lady Madeline was the
first to reach him.

“
Are you alright, my boy?” He turned
suddenly covered in mud up to his elbows, a dazed look in his eyes,
his face all smudged. He’d thrown down the spade and had begun
digging in the mud with his hands; drenched in sweat. “Here, here,
my boy. There’s no need to rush. We’ve only just begun,” Lady
Madeline said and held her hand out to help pull him up off his
knees. Mitch came up to them from behind.

“
Mal, you’re getting overheated;
shoulda warned you about that. Come out of the sun for a while and
have a cool drink. It’s lunchtime anyway,” he said taking him by
his other hand to help pull him up out of the ditch he’d dug for
himself. “You really have been at it, haven’t you?” Mitch said when
he got a good look at the depth of the pit.

Just then they heard Deck call, “We’re done!”
from outside the compound and come trotting up to them, Simon not
far behind. “Look at you!” Deck said when he saw his brother
covered in mud. “Mud cakes, Mal? I thought you’d outgrown that,”
Deck said and laughed.

Malcolm stood there looking at his arms
covered in mud to the elbows and began laughing himself. “I guess
I’ll always be young at heart,” he said, flicking the mud off his
fingers at his bother.

Mitch looked to Simon smiling. “Simon, would
ya take Mal to the stream so he can wash up. It’s lunchtime and I’m
hungry. How about you?”

“
Starved,” Simon said smiling back,
“Come on, Mal. Let’s get you cleaned up so we can eat.”

After lunch, they set about putting up the
tent. Lady Madeline, not content to let the men do it, only let
them sort and organize. She was going to prove her point if it was
the last thing she did, and she did.

Once they’d laid out everything, it took her
all of fifteen minutes to pitch the tent. It took a lot out of her,
but it was worth it. When she was done, she took a bow for her
astonished audience, as they clapped and cheered. “Okay, gentlemen,
let’s get back to work. I’d like to see if we can get that granite
cross to stand before we leave today,” she ordered, shooing them
back to the site like a mother hen with her chicks.

Everyone gathered around the cross, ropes in
hand, except for Malcolm. He went back to his pit. He was just
about to clear an area of floor space before lunch was called and
he wanted to at least get that much done before they left for the
day.

With Mitch, Deck, Simon and Lady Madeline to
do the loosening of the remaining soil around the cross, no one
really noticed that Malcolm had gone back to the pit, until he
called out. “I’ve found something over here!” he shouted.

“
Hold on Mal, we’ve just about got this
thing standing. Come over and give us a hand,” Mitch called to him,
Deck by his side, both of them grunting and growling with the
effort it was taking to get the thing to stand upright while Simon
and Lady Madeline cleared the area around the base to give it a
flat place to land.