‘Listen,’ says Max suddenly, ‘an owl.’ They are passing the first hide. These wooden huts for birdwatchers are placed at strategic points on the marsh – this one is on stilts looking out over a freshwater lake. Ruth hears the wind whispering in the reeds and thinks for the hundredth, thousandth, time of that wild night on the Saltmarsh when an owl’s call lured a man to his death. Around them lies water, dark and sullen, interspersed with marshy islands. Ruth shivers and Max makes a gesture as if he is going to put his arm round her but thinks better of it. ‘Almost there,’ is all he says.
The car park is pitch black and deserted apart from Max’s Range Rover. Inside it is blessedly warm and Ruth almost cries with happiness at the prospect of sitting down again. Is it normal for a pregnant person’s back to ache this much? Perhaps it’s because she’s overweight.
Max negotiates the turn into the narrow road that leads to the cottages. He’s a careful driver. In this respect, at least, he’s nothing like Nelson.
‘It was quite something, wasn’t it?’ he says. ‘The bonfire and the Druids and everything.’
‘Yes,’ says Ruth, ‘you can’t go wrong with a fire for spectacle. I suppose that’s why people used to worship it. Fire wards off the dark.’
‘Like the cry of the cockerel,’ says Max.
Ruth shoots him a curious look. ‘Why do you say that?’
For a second Max looks straight ahead, squinting at the dark road. Then he says, ‘Something that happened on the dig yesterday. I was just seeing off some sightseers. The Historical Society this time, I think. And I found a dead cockerel in one of the trenches.’
Ruth doesn’t know what to say. She is dimly aware that the neighbouring farms might keep hens but she can’t think how a bird can have wandered onto Max’s site, isolated as it is behind its grassy bank.
‘Was it left there deliberately?’
He gives a short laugh. ‘I’d say so, yes. Its throat had been cut.’
‘What?’
‘Slit from side to side. Very neat job.’
For one awful moment Ruth thinks she is going to be sick. She takes a deep breath.
‘Why would anyone want to do that?’
They have reached Ruth’s cottage. Max turns off the ignition. ‘Well a cockerel’s a fairly traditional sacrifice. Because they crow in the morning, they’re supposed to have power to hold back the darkness. That’s what I meant earlier.’
Ruth’s head is swimming. ‘A sacrifice? Why would anyone leave a sacrifice on an archaeological dig?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe someone who believes that we’re disturbing the dead.’
Briefly Ruth thinks of Cathbad and then shakes her head to clear it. Dead animals are not Cathbad’s style.
‘Of course,’ Max goes on, ‘cockerels have a Christian connection too. The cockerel is sometimes used to represent Jesus. It’s the whole dawn rebirth thing.’
‘Someone killed a bird as a Christian sacrifice?’
Max’s voice changes gear slightly. ‘Or an offering to Hecate.’
‘The goddess of witchcraft?’
‘She was the goddess of many things. The Greeks called her the “Queen of the Night” because she could see into the underworld. She’s the goddess of the crossroads, the three ways. That’s why images of her are often in triplicate. She is meant to haunt crossroads, crossing places, accompanied by her ghost dogs. Another name is Hekate Kourotrophos, Hecate the child-nurse. Women prayed to her in labour.’
‘Are cockerels traditionally sacrificed to her?’ Ruth tries to keep the disbelief out of her voice.
‘Well, it was black and it was traditional to sacrifice black animals to Hecate. Usually dogs or puppies because of her sacred dogs. But birds too occasionally. She’s sometimes linked to Athena and is depicted with an owl, the symbol of wisdom.’
‘We heard an owl earlier.’
Max smiles, his teeth very white in the darkness. ‘Maybe that was Hecate. She appears on marshland sometimes, shining her ghost lights to help you see your way.’
‘A will-o’-the-wisp,’ says Ruth, remembering another legend of spectral lights.
‘Exactly. Marsh lights. Phosphorescence. There are lots of stories about them.’
Ruth shivers. The time on the dashboard says 22:32. ‘I’d better be getting in.’
Max does not try to detain her nor does he mention coffee but, when she starts to open the door, he says ‘Ruth’ and, leaning over, kisses her on the lips.
Ruth goes straight to bed but as she lies cosily under her duvet with Flint purring loudly on her chest she finds that she can’t sleep. Instead words and phrases chase themselves crazily around her head. She turns one way and then the other (much to Flint’s irritation) but still can’t escape them. It’s a little like the half-waking dreams that you get when you’ve drunk too much, which is very annoying considering she only had one sip of punch and drank orange juice for the rest of the evening.
Then, suddenly, the voices vanish and she sees a mild, crushed-looking man who is gazing sadly at a ruined garden.
Ruth sits up, throwing Flint onto the floor. Suddenly she knows, without any shadow of a doubt, where the skulls are hidden.
CHAPTER 13
They find the well at the back of the house, near the tree with the swinging rope. It is half-buried under one of the new walls which Nelson orders to be dismantled, much to the foreman’s fury.
All that is left of the wishing well is a ring of bricks pressed into the soil. The hole has been filled with cement but Nelson thinks that this is only a cap, a few inches deep. Sure enough, it takes one of the workmen only a few minutes to break through with his pneumatic drill. Ruth peers into the void. Cold, dank air fills her nose and mouth but she can’t see anything but darkness.
‘How deep do you think it is?’ asks Ted.
‘Five or six metres,’ says Nelson, ‘possibly deeper.’
Nelson has a police diver on hand to climb down into the well. He is wearing a safety harness and is attaching a rope to a grappling hook.
‘Why a diver?’ asks Ruth. ‘There’s no water there now.’
‘We can’t be sure of that,’ says Nelson. ‘Because he’s insured and we don’t actually have a police wishing-well division.’
‘I’ll go down,’ offers Ted, ‘I’m into extreme archaeology.’
‘No, you won’t, sunshine,’ says Nelson, ‘you’ll stay where I can see you.’
The diver climbs carefully into the shaft and disappears from view. For a few minutes, there is complete silence apart from a bird singing noisily in the tree.
Then a voice comes from the depths of the well, ‘I’ve found something, sir.’
‘What?’ Nelson kneels on the edge and shouts downwards.
‘A skull.’
