know where he was, or whether he was alive or dead. All she knew was that he had not been in his car when it was driven over the edge of the quarry, nor had he been dropped separately into the same deep pool. And therefore there was still hope that he was extant, somewhere in the world, and no great distance from her. It was no secret now that it mattered to her more than anything else in the world, that the life she had held in her hands safely once should not slip through her fingers now.
Orrie stalked ahead like a prehistoric god on his own territory, huge and intent, never deviating from the path even when he waded ankle-deep in turgid water. The rest went round, not being equipped for wading, Paviour scurrying back to Orrie’s shoulder round the incursions of the river, anxious and ineffective in this elemental setting, the others strung out in a line that picked its way with deliberation along the foot of the slope, in the wet but thick and springy grass.
Above the glistening dotted line of wet clay that was the path, the bevelled slope of grass rose on their left, and the untidy fall of loose earth had certainly spilled across into the rising water. They came to the place where the first slip had occurred, and where, above them on level ground, the opened flue lay exposed to the sky. It had yielded nothing of value, either to the police or the archaeologists, except the few evidences of wilful damage. Whatever precious thing had ever rested there in hiding, it had certainly been removed in time. Soon the flue would be carefully built up again, if not covered over. But now the expanse of raw, reddish soil was twice as wide, for both shoulders of the original fall had begun to slide away. They stood in a chilly little group at the edge of the torn area, and looked at the slope in concerned silence. The path was still passable here, but by morning, if Orrie was right and the river still rising, it might well be covered.
‘If she comes over and starts eating under this bank,’ Orrie said with authority, ‘all this loose stuff’ll wash away like melting snow, and the bank’ll go. Ask me, we ought to put up warning notices, both ends of the path. It’ll be us for it, if somebody comes along here, not knowing, and goes in the river, or gets buried under that lot when it gives.’
‘I should have been glad to have it closed long ago,’ Paviour admitted, ‘but you know what happens if one tries to close a right-of-way, however inconvenient and dangerous. However little used, for that matter, though this one does get used. You think the river will rise much more? It’s some hours now since the rain stopped.’
‘Yes, but it takes a couple of days for the main weight to come down out of Wales. I reckon she may come up another two feet yet afore she starts dropping again. What’s more, we’ll need to do something permanent about it, besides closing it now. That’s not going to be safe again unless we firm up this bank with a concrete lining, and lift the path.’
‘That would probably be a shared responsibility,’ said George Felse, ‘with the local council, but Orrie could be right. Is this the only bad place?’
‘No, there’s a couple more just close to our boundary. But no falls there, so far. This,’ said Orrie, jerking his cropped reddish curls at the slope before them, ‘is moving now. Look at it!’
As though some infinitesimal tremor of the earth troubled the stability of the whole enclosure, little trickles of soil were starting down from the raw shoulder, a couple of yards to the left of the exposed flue, and running downhill with a tiny, sibilant sound, resting sometimes as they lodged in a momentarily stable hold, then continuing downhill on a changed course; all so quietly, without haste. The disturbed dead, Charlotte thought, trying to get out. If they could remember what it was like to be alive, she thought with a quite unexpected surge of desolation and dismay, they’d let well alone.
A curious effect, this boiling of the earth. When the pool of Bethesda was troubled, it did miracles. She badly needed a miracle, but she doubted if this narrow well into the depths of history, for all its disquiet, could provide one.
‘We’d better have a look at this bit upstream,’ said George, ‘while we’re about it. Orrie’s right, you may have to put up those notices, for your own protection, as well as other people’s.’
Orrie turned willingly, and led the way again, surging through the shallows, and the others strung out behind him on the dry side of the path, gingerly skirting the shifting pile of loose soil. Charlotte was last in the line, since they had to proceed in single file or wade, like their leader. She never knew exactly why she looked back. Perhaps, being the nearest, she heard the slight crescendo of furtive sound that was too small to reach the ears of those in front. The little drifts of earth insisted, and stones began to break free and roll gently and sluggishly downwards. Only small stones, too little to change the world, but they ran, and rolled, and jumped, and the trembling of the well was every moment more urgent with the promise of a miracle; and something prophetic, a small flame of wondering and hoping, kindled in her mind.
So it happened that her chin was still on her shoulder, and she had actually halted and turned in order to watch more attentively, when she saw a sudden small, dark hole burst open in the high mask of earth above her. Not just a hollow, shadowed darker than its surroundings, but a veritable hole upon total blackness. It grew, its rim crumbled away steadily. She saw movement varying its empty blackness, something paler moving within, scraping at the soil. Another biblical image of portent, the cloud, the hole, no bigger than a man’s hand, that grew, and grew, like this…
She was not given to screaming or fainting, and she did neither. She stood stock-still for perhaps ten seconds, her eyes fixed upon that groping, dogged hand, her mind connecting furiously, with a speed and precision she had never yet discovered within herself. The dead were breaking out of their graves with a vengeance. Somebody dumped his car—somebody did this to him—somebody close here, somebody among us. Twenty hours under the earth! He wasn’t supposed ever to show up again. Someone is quite confident, quite sure of his work. ‘
She turned and called after the dwindling procession winding its way along the riverside: ‘Wait! Come back here a moment, please, come and look! I’ve found something! ’ The right voice, pleasurably excited, urgent enough to halt them, not agitated enough to give them any warning of more than some minor discovery, some small find carried down by the fall, or the vault of another flue broken open. And that was true, how true, but they wouldn’t know the reason. When they turned to look, she waved them imperiously back to the spot, herself planted immovably. ‘Come here! Come and see! It’s important.’
They came, half indulging her and half curious. She watched their faces as they drew near, and they were all interested, enquiring and untroubled by any forewarning, for their eyes were on her, and the hand, grown to a wrist and forearm now, laboured patiently some feet above her head. She waited until they were all close, and only then did she turn and point, ordering sharply: ‘Look! Look up there!’
Two braced arms within the hypocaust thrust at the thinning barrier of soil at that moment, and sent its ruptured fringes scattering. A heaving body, blackened and encrusted with soil, erupted out of its grave, and with a
