Another loud snarl erupted from the bushes — most definitely the open mouth kind, with sharp teeth savagely glinting no doubt (although Eden hadn’t so much as glimpsed the animal). ‘Okay, okay, you win,’ she breathed. A moment later, she retraced her steps. ‘I suppose I have to take the long way to the house,’ she told herself with a sigh. On passing the station she noticed the sign again. ‘Dog Lands. After being turned back by a bad-tempered mutt, don’t you love the irony?’ She shook her head. ‘And the name of the house where you will be staying? Now, what do they call that, Miss Eden Page?’ A grim smile tugged her mouth. ‘Why, Miss Page, they call that house Dog Star.’ She hefted the heavy bag as its strap bit into her shoulder. ‘Dog Lands. Dog Star. A wild dog. It doesn’t get any better than this, does it?’ From those words, uttered half-humorously, to knowing that she had to take the longer road route to Dog Star House was only a hop and a skip to recollecting what the man on the train had said.
2. Monday Afternoon: 5.45
Eden Page found her aunt. She was at the bottom of her garden, and under a large gazebo. Why she stood shoulder-deep in a hole beneath an awning in the rain, and why she picked lumps of mud from that chasm Eden didn’t know or care. The walk from the station had been punishing. The road that pierced the village was dead straight and encouraged vehicles to speed dangerously. Passing farm trucks had splashed her. The hold-all’s dead weight hurt her shoulder, she was sure a whopper of a bruise was blooming there from her skin.
‘Heather! You were supposed to collect me from the station. You promised!’ Eden threw the hold-all down onto the grass. ‘I kept calling! Why didn’t you answer the phone?’
‘Eden! Watch where you’re putting your feet. Those are fragile. I’ve just spent the last two hours getting them out in one piece.’
‘Move back from there. Further back. No, to your left. Oh! You’ve trod on one. Whatever you do, don’t do any more damage! No, stand still. Stop tramping round like a — oh!’ Heather slapped her hand down onto the rim of the pit in which she stood. ‘Eden! You stood on the tile, you — ’
Her aunt finished the sentence, however with, ‘you’ll break the only complete tile I’ve found.’
Eden hadn’t seen her aunt in almost a decade. Back then, the woman hadn’t been slow to address her with that scathing, ‘you idiot girl’. Now events had moved on. Eighteen months ago, her aunt, Heather Laird, had inherited Dog Star House from her mother. Heather was an accountant; her only child served in the Merchant Navy; at fifty-three she possessed the same youthful vigour as the Page side of the family. Right at that moment Heather (always ‘Heather’ to Eden — never ‘Aunt’) stood in a hole up to her shoulders. Above her stood a portable gazebo shelter of the type that can be bought in garden centres. Raindrops hung and dripped from the sides in slow procession.
Grimly suggestive, the oblong slit in the earth in which Heather stood resembled an open grave. Heather’s body possessed a wiry toughness, her hair had been scraped back tight into a pony tail. Her hands were thick with dirt right up to the elbows. As Eden stood there glaring, Heather reached down into the hole and hoisted out a boulder the size of a water melon. The muscles in her arms protruded from her skin with perfect definition. Handling the rock confidently, she rolled it across the rough grass away from the pit’s side
Eden wasn’t for one moment going to let talk of cracked tiles brush aside her complaint. ‘Heather. Why didn’t you pick me up from the station? I’ve had to walk for the best part of an hour. I’m soaked.’
Heather cried out. ‘Ah! Here’s another one! My God, not just one… I don’t believe it. One, two, three, four. There must be another dozen. Here, hold out your hand. I’ll give you one at a time. Careful, careful! Put them in the plastic tray over there by the chair. Not the white tray, the green one. Gently, don’t drop it in. Do you see? Green tray for coins, white for potsherds. The big red bowl’s for bones.’
Eden looked from what appeared to be a small pebble that Heather had placed in her open hand to where the woman stood in the grave-shaped pit. A battery-powered lamp lit the bottom of it brilliantly. It was as if Heather stood in a bath of silver radiance. Rich, brown walls of earth gave way to a black floor littered with lumps of stone the size of shoe boxes. The rich soil odours were almost intoxicating.
Heather crouched to scrape dirt with a trowel. ‘I can’t wait for the rain to stop so I put this up.’ She pointed up at the canvas awning with her trowel. ‘The work must go on.’
‘Work? You mean this hole?’
‘Excavation. I’ve found the remains of a Roman outbuilding; the actual villa is over in that field; alas, the villa’s discovery is nothing to do with me — it was uncovered by the county archaeological unit a couple of years ago. Naturally I’m not allowed to touch that. English Heritage whacked it with a preservation order. If I so much as look at it I’ll be sued. But this is my land, so this is my Roman tool-shed, or stable, or whatever it is. I’ve spent the last three weeks excavating. And no bloody rain’s going to stop me.’
‘Or picking your niece up from the station?’
‘Sorry about that.’ Heather briefly glanced up as she scraped crumbs of earth from the bottom of the pit. ‘I only hope this damp won’t make the sides collapse.’
‘You said if I phoned from the station that you or Curtis would — ’
‘Yippee, another one. Heavy. At least three fused together. Big — could be early sestertii.’
‘Heather! I had to walk an hour… in the rain… with that bag. You don’t — ’
‘I said I’m sorry.’ Heather’s eyes flicked from the fused lump of coins to Eden standing above her. ‘But you didn’t confirm what day you were arriving. I thought it was tomorrow.’
‘I said all along, Monday.’
‘Well, never mind. The main thing is you’re here, safe and sound. Nice to see you again, by the way, after all these years. Do the honours, will you?’ She handed Eden the coins glued together by decay. ‘Make yourself useful. Green tray, remember.’
Eden sighed, realising that there was no point in pursuing a heartfelt expression of regret from her aunt. She laid the green-brown lump in the tray alongside the other grimy objects.
‘So these really are coins?’
‘They are. Masses of them. A real hoard. Isn’t it fantastic!’ Heather spoke with gusto. ‘And all at the bottom of my garden.’
‘Valuable?’
‘I’ve winkled out about five hundred Roman so far, all bronze. In that uncleaned state I might be lucky to get fifty pounds for them. If I spend six months brushing them, soaking them in olive oil, brushing again and again and again — always careful to preserve the patina — I might get three hundred quid. It’s hardly worth the effort, is it?’ She wiped her brow. Some of the dirt from her hand painted a dark streak across her forehead. ‘It’s not the cash, it’s what I can learn about the Roman settlement here that’s so interesting.’ Her eyes shone. ‘No. More than interesting. Fascinating!’
Eden looked at the state of Heather. ‘You’re not afraid to get your hands dirty.’
