Oh thanks be to the God she doesn't believe in. It is Erik.
Half-laughing, half-crying, Ruth dives to open the door.
Erik Anderssen, dressed in a black raincoat and carrying a bottle of whisky, stands smiling in the doorway.
'Hello Ruthie,' he says, 'fancy a nightcap?'
CHAPTER 11
'Drowned landscapes,' says Erik, his singsong voice echoing across the wind-flattened grass, 'have a peculiar magic of their own. Think of Dunwich, the city swallowed by the sea, the church bells ringing underwater. Think of the drowned forest on this very beach, the trees buried beneath our feet. There is something deep within us which fears what is buried, what we cannot see.'
Ruth and Erik are walking along the beach, their feet crunching on the hundreds of razor clam shells brought in by the tide. Yesterday's rain has given way to a beautiful winter's day, cold and bright. The horrors of last night seem far away. It seems impossible that Sparky is dead and that Ruth herself could be in danger. And yet, thinks Ruth, trudging along beside Erik, it is true and it did happen.
Last night she had flung herself into Erik's arms, almost incoherent with crying. He had been very kind, she remembers, had sat her down and made her coffee with whisky in it. She had told him about Sparky and he had said that, when they got the body back, they should give her a Viking funeral, a burning pyre drifting out to sea.
Ruth, who wanted to bury Sparky in her garden, under the apple tree, had said nothing but had been aware that Erik was paying Sparky a huge compliment, considering her a soul worthy of such an honour. She remembers her mother telling her that animals don't have souls. Another black mark against God.
Ruth hadn't wanted to be alone last night and so Erik had slept on the sofa, folding up his long limbs under Ruth's sleeping bag and not complaining when Flint woke him up at five, bringing in a dead mouse. He has been a true friend, thinks Ruth. Despite everything, it is wonderful to see him again, to be striding over the Saltmarsh with him once more.
After breakfast, Erik suggested going to look at the henge site and Ruth had agreed readily. She feels the need to be out of doors, away from the house and the dark corners where she expects, every second, to see Sparky's little face appear. No, it is better to be in the open, to be walking along the wide expanse of beach, under the high, blue sky. Mind you, she had forgotten how far it was when the tide is out. The sand stretches for miles, glittering with secret inlets, the occasional piece of driftwood black against the horizon. It looks vast and completely featureless but Erik seems to know exactly where he is going. He strides ahead, his eyes on the horizon. Ruth, wearing her trusty Wellingtons, plods along behind him.
Last night's wind has blown the sand into odd shapes and ridges. Nearer the sea it is flatter, striped with empty oyster shells and dead crabs. Little streams run across the sand to join the sea and, occasionally, there are larger expanses of water, reflecting the blue of the sky. Ruth splashes her way through one of these pools, remembering the summer of the henge dig and the way the sand had felt under her bare feet. She can almost feel the sting of the water and the exquisite pain of walking on the clam shells. At the end of the day, her feet had been a mass of tiny cuts.
'Do you still think we should have left the henge where it was?' she asks.
Erik raises his face to the sun, shutting his eyes. 'Yes,' he says. 'It belonged here. It marked a boundary. We should have respected that.'
'Boundaries were important to prehistoric people, weren't they?'
'Yes indeed.' Erik steps delicately over a fast-flowing stream; he isn't wearing Wellingtons. 'Which is why they marked them with burial mounds, religious shrines, offerings to the ancestors.'
'Do you think that my Iron Age body marks a boundary?' Over breakfast, Ruth had told him more about her find, about the girl with her head shaved and branches twisted around her arms and legs, about the torques and the coins and the tantalising location of the body.
Erik hesitates. He uses his professional voice; measured, calm. 'Yes, I do,' he says, at last. 'Boundaries in the ancient landscape were sometimes marked by isolated burials.
Think of the bodies at Jutland, for example.'
Ruth thinks of the Jutland discoveries: oak coffins found in water, containing Bronze Age bodies. One had been that of a young woman and what Ruth remembers chiefly were her clothes, a surprisingly trendy outfit of braided miniskirt and crop top.
'What does gadget boy think?' asks Erik.
'Oh, he thinks it's all chance. No link between the Iron Age body and the henge.'
Erik snorts. 'How that boy ever became an archaeologist!
Doesn't he understand that if the area was sacred to the Neolithic and Bronze Age people it was sacred to the Iron Age people? That the landscape itself is important.
This is a liminal zone, between land and water, of course it's special.'
'It isn't that special to us though.'
'Isn't it? It's National Trust land, a nature reserve. Isn't that our way of saying that it is sacred?'
Ruth thinks of the National Trust, sensible women in quilted coats selling souvenirs at castle gates. It isn't her idea of sacred. Then she thinks of David and the way he spoke about the migrating birds. He is someone, she realises, who does think that the place is special.
Erik stops abruptly. He is looking at the sand, which has suddenly become dark and silty. He traces a line with his smart shoe. Underneath, the sand is quite startlingly blue.
'Burnt matter,' he says, 'the roots of ancient trees. We're getting near.'
Looking back, Ruth sees a clump of trees to the left and the spire of a church away in the distance. She remembers the view perfectly; they are very near the henge circle. But the sand, grey in the winter sun, gives nothing away. What the Sand gets, the Sand keeps forever.
Ruth remembers how the henge had looked that summer evening ten years ago, the ring of gnarled wooden posts sinister and otherworldly as if it had risen out of the sea. She remembers Erik kneeling before the posts in an attitude almost of prayer. She remembers, when she first entered the circle, a shiver running through her whole body.
'It's here,' says Erik.
There is nothing to see, just a slightly raised circle, darker than the surrounding sand, but Erik acts as if he has entered a church. He stands completely still, his eyes closed and then touches the ground, as if for luck.
'Sacred ground,' he says.
'That's what Cathbad would say.'
'Cathbad! Have you seen him?'
'Yes… Erik?'
'What?'
'Why didn't you tell me that you knew Cathbad quite well, that he'd been a student of yours?'
Erik is silent for a moment, looking at her. She can't read his cool, blue stare. Guilt? Amusement? Anger?
'Does it matter?'
'Of course it matters!' Ruth explodes. 'He's a suspect in a murder investigation.'
'Is he?'
Ruth hesitates. She knows that Nelson suspects and distrusts Cathbad but is that enough to make him a suspect? Probably. Aloud she says, 'I don't know. The police think he's hiding something.'
'The police! What do they know? Hoi polloi. Barbarians.
Do you remember when they removed the protesters from the site? The unnecessary violence they used?'
'Yes.' The police had been heavy-handed when they removed the protesters. Erik and the other archaeologists had been distressed. They had lodged a complaint, which the police had ignored.
'Did you put Cathbad up to it?' asks Ruth. 'The protest?'
Erik smiles. 'No, the local pagans were up in arms already. There are a lot of pagans in Norfolk, you know.
Let's just say that I encouraged him a bit.'
'Did you get him the job at the university too?'
