The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [76]
‘Meaning what?’
‘Who knows? A ritualized burial right by the entrance suggests a deliberate killing. Maybe the stones round her are a miniature Avebury, confining her spirit, so her ghost focuses the magic of the place.’
‘Wow.’ Easy to forget, seeing visitors in floral wellies patting the stones in sunlight, that Avebury could have so dark a past. ‘So when Keiller’s team finds the Barber Surgeon under a stone…’
‘Exactly,’ says Martin. ‘They get the wrong end of the stick altogether, at first.’
CHAPTER 18
1938
I told you,’ said Mr Cromley ‘Sacrifice. The killing of the priest-king. Blood feeds the corn.’
‘Tosh,’ said Mr Piggott.
‘Peace, children,’ said Mr Keiller. The three of them stood on the lip of the pit, staring at the skeleton under the massive stone.
‘Well, what else could it be, Alec? Frazer cites examples from every culture. The Marimo Indians, for example, always slaughtered a short fat man: sympathetic magic, to represent the desired shape of the young ears of ripening corn.’
Stu Pig snorted with laughter.
Mr Keiller took Mr Cromley more serious, though. ‘We must allow the possibility, Piggott–though I have to agree with you that Don’s a touch too keen to smell magic in the air. We need to lift this chap out.’ He looked away and closed his eyes, as he did when he was thinking hard. ‘Our first skeleton from the circle. Something for you to sketch, Heartbreaker, and don’t linger over it. We should parcel this chap off toute suite to find out how he died and, if possible, when. Don’t want the padre finding out, in case he tries to commandeer the bones for immediate Christian burial.’
Terrible disappointment. They brought him out, bone by bone, and with him came a bodkin and a pair of scissors and three silver coins, dating to thirteen-something. So he wasn’t near as ancient as Mr Keiller hoped.
‘A tailor, maybe. Or a travelling barber surgeon. Yes, I like that explanation better. Cuts hair, pulls teeth, sets bones.’ Mr Keiller tapped the rough sketch I had done. ‘This is good, by the way, Heartbreaker. Can you work it up into something that shows us what might have happened? Passing one day, sees the villagers toppling a stone, lends a hand and gets in the way as it comes down. Dead as a doornail, they can’t pull him out–his foot is trapped underneath. So they bury him with the megalith.’
Mr Cromley raised one elegant eyebrow. ‘How do you know it was an accident?’ We were watching Mr Young treat the bones with a solution of acetone and cellulose. It came out of the glass jar thick like honey, the sharp smell making our eyes water. When the preservative had dried, the skeleton was to be sent to the Royal College of Surgeons.
‘Don,’ said Mr Piggott, witheringly, ‘leave off, will you? Not everything in the world has to be sinister.’
‘So much more fun if it is, though,’ said Mr Cromley.
Davey had taken to hanging around the dig when he’d nothing else to do. If I saw him in time I found myself an errand, anything to look busy. Sometimes I couldn’t avoid him. Mr Darling’s stables at Beckhampton had trained the Derby winner, Bois Roussel, and Davey, like half the village, had put a couple of bob on him.
‘Come on, Fran, we got to celebrate. Slap-up tea at McIlroy’s in Swindon? Pictures? Too Hot to Handle is showing–we’d be in time for the bus…’
‘Not tonight.’
‘You told me you like Clark Gable.’ Wide, hopeful eyes. He was so sure I’d say yes.
Mr Keiller appeared from behind the newly erected Barber Surgeon