To Dream of the Dead

‘Jane,’ he said, and if she was honest she’d have to admit he didn’t sound over-excited.

‘Sorry, I thought I’d get the machine. Coops, listen, I’m not stalking you or anything. You gave me your home number, in case anything came up?’

‘And what’s come up, Jane?’

‘Erm… well, like… nothing. I mean, that’s the point. Nothing’s happening. It’s all stopped. Why’s it all stopped, Coops?’

She felt stupid, but he must surely understand how important this was to her. She was carrying the blazing torch lit by Lucy Devenish, folklorist of this parish, now dead, and if she let it go out…

‘Weather’s not helping, obviously,’ Neil Cooper said.

‘You’ve got those tent things you can put over the trenches.’

‘Yeah, but it’s not satisfactory. And there’s no desperate hurry, is there? And anyway, I keep telling you, it’s not my—’

‘There is for me, Coops, I’ll be back at school in the New Year.’

‘Jane, they can’t time the whole project to fit your personal schedule.’

‘I just want— Don’t want to interfere or anything, I just want to be there. On the fringe, quiet as a mouse. Just like want to be there when the stones are raised again.’

‘Well, yeah,’ he said. ‘I can understand that.’

There was something Neil Cooper wasn’t telling her. Or maybe he was just pissed off because the dig had been taken out of the hands of the county archaeology department: too big, too important, needed specialists in prehistory.

‘And let’s not forget,’ Jane said, ‘that if it wasn’t for me you might never’ve discovered it in the first place. I mean, I don’t like to keep throwing this at y—’

‘Jane—’

‘Sorry.’

‘None of us will miss anything, OK? It’ll be on TV. All the best bits, anyway.’

‘Huh?’

His voice had sounded damp and sick in a way that didn’t make sense. ‘What would you expect,’ he said, ‘with Blore in the driving seat?’

‘Sorry…’ Jane was on the edge of the sofa. ‘Did you say—what did you say?’

Coops said nothing.

‘Did you say Blore? As in, like, Bill Blore, of Trench One?’

‘I’d hate to think there was another one out there,’ Coops said.

‘Holy shit,’ Jane said.

‘Look, don’t get—’

‘But like, I thought the contract had gone to this… Dore Valley Archaeology?’

He was silent again.

‘Come on, Coops, who am I going to tell?’

‘Dore Valley Archaeology,’ Coops said, ‘no longer exists as an independent contractor. In mid-October it was acquired by Blore’s company, Capstone.’

‘Wow. I didn’t know that. I mean, I didn’t know he had a company.’

‘They all do. Archaeology’s a business. Like everything else. And Capstone have swallowed Dore Valley. More people, more resources, more prestige digs, plus TV documentaries on the side. Blore’s got it sewn up, money at both ends.’

‘Bill Blore,’ Jane said slowly. ‘Wow.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Jane…’

‘Hey, I’m sorry, but Bill—’

‘You’re missing the point, Jane, and maybe I shouldn’t expect you to see the significance, but you’re thinking about the so-called glamorous TV presenter, while I’m seeing the man who is not Herefordshire Council’s favourite archaeologist.’

Jane thought about this for a moment, and then she started to understand.

‘The Dinedor Serpent.’

‘We still prefer to call it the Rotherwas Ribbon,’ Coops said primly. Well, he would. The council stuck to the original name, Ribbon, because that sounded less sexy than Serpent or Dragon. Easier to ignore.

But it was sexy. Unique, probably. Coleman’s Meadow, with real standing stones to uncover, might turn out to be more immediately spectacular, but the Dinedor Serpent was the only one of its kind in Europe. Seriously significant.

So significant that the philistine bastards on Herefordshire Council were shoving a new road across it.

Jane knew all about this. She’d pasted up the news cuttings as part of her A-level project, with a picture of Prof. William Blore next to the partly uncovered Serpent.

‘Coops, come on, what he said… the council were asking for it. You know that.’

‘Let’s not forget that if it hadn’t been for the work on the road, we wouldn’t have found the Ribbon in the first place.’

‘Serpent. Yeah, but—’

‘Same with Coleman’s Meadow and the housing plan. Same with most finds. Most archaeology today is rescue archaeology, you grow to accept that.’

‘Especially in this bloody county,’ Jane said. ‘But that’s what’s so good about Bill Blore. He doesn’t accept bureaucratic bullshit.’

In her picture, big Bill Blore was stripped to the waist, deeply tanned, hard hat at an angle. Thickset, maybe, but not fat. He’d said that Herefordshire, having been neglected for decades, was now yielding stuff that could change our whole perception of Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Age societies.

And, because she’d quoted it in an essay, Jane knew exactly what he’d said about the council’s decision to go ahead with the new road, regardless.

‘He said local authorities shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions affecting major national heritage sites. Especially councils as short-sighted, pig-headed and ignorant as Hereford’s.’

‘Words to that effect,’ Coops said stiffly.

‘Those actual words… actually.’ Excitement began to ripple through Jane. ‘Coops, this is just so totally cool.’

‘Jane, it’s not. Blore’s got into Coleman’s Meadow through the back door, now he’s running this prestigious dig right under the nose of an authority he’s publicly trashed. That is not cool. That is a very uncomfortable situation for all of us.’

‘Only if you work for the council.’

‘They’re blaming my department, naturally. Lucky I still have a job. OK, unless Dore Valley had told us themselves, there was no way we could’ve known that Blore was quietly moving in while we were negotiating with them, but that’s not how some people see it.’

‘You wanted to leave the council anyway, didn’t you?’

‘Yeah,’ Coops said. ‘I did.’

Another silence. Jane held her breath. She was picking up stuff she could really use — like at the university interviews? To show how seriously au fait she was with trench gossip.

She’d also be able to tell them she’d worked with Bill Blore.

Wow.

‘Just that when I was asked to join Dore Valley as a field archaeologist,’ Coops said, ‘nobody told me it’d be part of the Blore empire.’

‘But isn’t that, like… good?’

‘Goodnight, Jane,’ Neil Cooper said.