Sleepwalker (3 page)

“Tell me about the ghost,” said Peter, smoking.

“What is this all about then, Peter? You call me in to talk about a ghost? Who told you to do that? Oliver?”

“You know all the important things, Alf. Are the men talking about a ghost?”

“Men talk, don't they? That's a natural thing, isn't it?” A Yorkshire smile, and that warmth Peter missed whenever he traveled. “But you know, Peter, there is a haunting or—or a Something about, isn't there. All these little things that have been happening. And now the bad accident in Trench Five. I don't worry myself, like, but some of the men might.”

“A ghost.”

“Nobody actually believes in such things, do they? But think of all the peculiar little things that have happened. The tools that have gone missing, and the way the coffee cups have moved about every night.”

But Peter could not consider a ghost. He could think only of Davis Lowry.

They had both loved the same woman, Margaret Rawlings, a brilliant archaeologist with a limitless future. She could have worked in Olduvai with Peter. She could have hiked the Andes with Peter. She could have done that long-overdue survey of Kos with Peter, who wanted her, and needed her. Instead she had married Davis, and had become a housewife in California, a helper, not a companion. He had heard the gossip from fellow archaeologists. Everyone else was sympathetic to Davis. Peter knew what had happened. No one had to tell him. Because she had married such an egocentric man she had begun to drink, and then her life had crumbled until she had died in such an agonizing and spectacular' way that Peter could not stand to think about it.

“Oliver told you to ask me, didn't he?” Alf said, smiling. “That man's a scamp, he is. It takes more than a wall of rock falling on him to teach him any sense. Oliver thinks I'm superstitious.”

“Are you?”

“I believe in what happens, Peter. And what happens here is very strange.”

“Little accidents happen on every dig. I don't want you encouraging the other men to believe in—whatever you believe.”

Alf laughed. “There's a ghost, Peter. But I won't talk about him.”

2

The Foundation was excavating near the river Ouse, on Skeldergate. Several late nineteenth-century buildings had been demolished, and the law allowed archaeologists to study the site before a new building was erected. The preliminary examination had exposed wonders. They had uncovered the rugged remains of an Anglo-Saxon tower, evidently a riverside stronghold. Digging deeper in another trench—they weren't trenches so much as large rectangular chasms—a Roman road surface was scraped bare. They were in the midst of the richest finds most of them had ever seen.

They had found Norse antler-pin jewelry and peat-blackened sandals. There were middens and filled-in wells, and, on one later afternoon, a black and slimy leather sack was brushed free of the last damp earth, disclosing, through a split in the leather, the glint of red fire. It was a hoard of gold sceatas, hidden for over a thousand years.

But now the site had a new look in Peter's eyes. It was the day after the cave-in, and Peter had found it hard to sleep the night before. All this talk of ghosts was disturbing. No, not disturbing—not at all. It was irritating. There had been little accidents since the very start of excavation here. Unimportant little events. A broken window, a fire in a rubbish bin, missing folders. Tools that had been hung up tidily in the tool cabin had been jumbled and heaped on the floor by morning.

He could hot sit still at his desk, so he found some manual labor to do. There was always plenty of that.

People were going to say that Peter Chambers was still a bit strange, after all these years. The Skeldergate dig had been plagued by very unusual accidents, and the men talked of nothing but ghosts. Tell me this, they would say. Would that happen with a normal site supervisor?

The generator, a noisy machine on wheels like a small tractor, rumbled. The pneumatic drill clattered, powered by the lavender Silensair air compressor. Every hand was busy. Peter emptied the buckets of earth as they were winched from Trench Five. Jane was shoveling, and Mandy was hefting buckets and hooking them onto the winch rope.

Jane was lithe, with delicate features, but she could shovel as well as any man. Mandy was a dumpling, blue-eyed and red-cheeked, and she handled a mattock—a pick with a broad, flat blade—easily. The science of archaeology had highly trained women working beside men—like Oliver and Skip—who were hired laborers. Everyone involved worked with enthusiasm, and with care.

The wheelbarrow was full, and Peter wheeled it along the plank track and emptied it. He wheeled the empty barrow back and emptied another bucketful into it. Jane and Mandy were clearing the trench of the mud that had nearly taken two lives. It was unscreened earth, and so the work had to go slowly. There might be an artifact hidden in the muck. It was late afternoon, and although it was January, it was only chilly, not actually cold.

Peter hated to be a nuisance. They were working so steadily. But he finally climbed down into the trench himself, and began filling buckets. “I'm beginning to be worried that we won't have it all dug out by dark.”

Jane straightened and gazed at him, tucking a wisp of hair under her yellow helmet. “We're working quickly, Peter, actually,” she said, with enough courtesy to disclose her irritation.

“Right,” said Peter. “I know you are. I can bring some men out of Trench Nine.”

“I think we can cope,” smiled Jane. Peter knew that as far as she was concerned, the wage-earning shovel and mattock men were sturdy but inept. This was sensitive work, and required professional hands.

Peter stooped, and flicked a splinter of bone into the black plastic finds tray. It might be the remains of a Norseman's dinner, or a fragment of Anglo-Saxon jewelry.

“I think we can finish by dark fairly easily, Peter,” Jane was saying. But Jane was one of the reasons Peter hovered here. Jane: the future. Simply seeing her work with a trowel, or tuck a loose lock of hair into her helmet, was enough to make Peter feel his entire life change.

“You were more help up top emptying buckets,” said Mandy. She had that bright milkmaid's smile, and dimpled elbows.

“Perhaps this is one of those afternoons when you should go play with your toys, Peter,” said Jane, in a kind tone. “Really. We can manage this quite well.”

This reference to his “toys” made Peter wince, and he smiled to disguise his annoyance. For years he had loved cars and airplanes that could be operated by remote control. He had designed cars himself, and had patented several improvements for remote-controlled Cessnas. Sundays tended to find him in a field north of York, commanding one of his remote-controlled airplanes. They were scarcely toys. They were examples of a science of the sort Leonardo would have relished.

Strangely, he had supposed that Jane admired his knowledge. He had taken her flying with him just a few weeks ago. It had been a special afternoon. Now it seemed she took this science lightly. Still, he smiled. He was standing in ground water that was very cold, and the color of Rowntree's cocoa. He was a hard man to discourage.

He picked up a shovel from the muck, took a scoop of the sloppy mud, and hit his head on the scaffolding.

Hard. He was not wearing his helmet. Langton would not have been surprised. Peter bent double, tears in his eyes, a taste in his mouth like warm salt water. He touched a knuckle to his lips. He had bitten them.

Jane slipped a helmet over his head, and made soothing sounds. “It's a terrible thing, Peter. Are you all right?”

“I'm in the way,” said Peter at last. “Carry on. Go on, both of you. Keep working.'.'

He eyed the supports. They looked strong. They had looked strong yesterday. Perhaps the cheapness of the steel pipes had nothing to do with their collapse.

It was dangerous here. “Maybe we've done enough for one day,” he said.

“We'll be very careful,” said Jane.

He could not bear it if anything happened to her.

But he was being foolish. Accidents could be prevented. There were no unseen powers here. He touched her hand. “Please be careful.”

“Go on up and man the wheelbarrow,” she said.

He had one foot on the ladder. The thin steel rungs did not look strong enough to support his muddy boot. Careful, he told himself. Be very careful. He began to pull himself up the ladder, when Jane's voice stopped him.

“Peter!” she called again.

He had never heard this thrill in her voice before. He dropped from the ladder, and splashed through the mud.

“Peter, there's something here.”

There was more in her voice than a simple thrill. It was something more. Something like horror.

“I can't see anything,” said Peter.

“Here.” As she extended her hand, her forefinger stretched to touch another finger extended, blackly, from the earth.

His first thought was, Someone is buried here. It's one of my men!

But this was not one of his men. It couldn't be. The finger was ebony and glistening, and as Peter knelt to examine it he began to understand what he was seeing.

Nearly all of the mud which had collapsed into the trench had been cleared. The falling mud had exposed a new surface in the trench wall. The surface here was peat-consistency, with decayed wood and leaves and scraps of timber, some of it charred. The collapse of the wall had exposed this pit of long-ago rotted vegetation.

This blackened finger silenced them.

“I need my trowel,” said Jane softly.

Mandy slipped Jane's trowel into her hand. Archaeologists have favorite trowels, tools worn in just the right places. Jane dug deftly, chipping the decayed vegetation from around the finger. Mandy used a white tape to measure the finger, and quickly sketched the find surface on grid paper. She fumbled for the Minolta, and took a series of snaps while Jane worked.

Jane gently flicked away specks of carbonized plant. Her trowel made a faint chiming sound. As she worked, it was as though the hand reached out toward her, because that is exactly what it was. A perfect hand.

Mandy's pencil scratched. She turned a page and began another sketch.

Jane met Peter's eyes. They had found human bones before, even the skull of an infant in Trench One. But this was not a skeleton. This was a hand, complete with fingernails. Examined closely, the mud brushed away, the swirls of the fingerprints were clear.

Peter hesitated. He lifted his hand. He paused.

He touched it.

Immediately, he shrank back. The hand was cold, earth-cold, groundwater-cold. And it was something else, something that made his pulse hammer.

It was supple. It had moved as the weight of his touch pressed upon it, as flexible as the hand of a man just dead. Or a man who was merely asleep. The fingers were relaxed, the palm upturned, like someone who was dreaming.

Peter whispered, “I'll ring Dr. Higg. We mustn't tell anyone else until we find out what he wants us to do.”

The hand gleamed in the late afternoon.

“We'll get the high-powered torches out of storage,” he added. “We can work all night.”

The groundwater splashed, and the electric light glittered. They stretched canvas across the trench. They continued to work into the night, long after everyone else had left the site.

As they worked, the arm extended itself toward them, farther and farther, reaching. The skin of the arm had a sheen, like the most expensive leather. There were fine hairs on the arm, blond against the dark skin. The arm moved, just slightly, when Peter brushed it, or when Jane worked under it with the trowel.

They were afraid to speak. More and more of the arm reached out toward them from the black earth. At last, Peter motioned for them to stop. The time had come for them to discover what it was they had before them. Was it only a limb, or was it an entire, preserved human being?

3

Davis fell across the bed. He did not expect to sleep. Birds were squabbling outside, and bright sun leaked through the curtains. He could never sleep after a long flight, and he still did not trust himself to sleep. Even here in England, where, he knew, all would be well.

His mind was a jumble. The packed 747. Dr. Higg's wonderful smile greeting him at Heathrow. The terrible traffic, until at last they passed the Maida Vale station and turned the corner to Dr. Higg's house in St. John's Wood. It was wonderful to be here. In a few minutes he would rouse himself and walk up to Abbey Road.

He slept.

When he woke it was dark. He bathed and shaved. He felt like a man reprieved from death. He felt remarkably well, in fact.

Dr. Higg waved Davis into a chair. “Scottish trout and Montrachet,” he said, “after we do a bit of work.”

“I'm looking forward to work,” said Davis. “I need it.”

“We have plenty of that. And we need you, Davis. Rather badly, I'm afraid.”

Dr. Higg had a large face, with creases that made him resemble a hound. Firelight glittered in his eyes, however, and they were not the eyes of a sleepy, comfortable animal. Higg studied Davis, as though looking into Davis's soul.

Davis imagined that his soul, if it could be observed, was a mess. He had called Dr. Higg as soon as he realized that he had to change his life immediately. “I need a project,” he had said. “Something that involves a lot of work. And I need it now. I can't wait.”

Davis accepted a drink, one of those smoke-rich whiskeys Higg had always favored. Higg had been Davis's teacher at York University some fifteen years before. Davis thought he knew Higg well, and yet the man's evident intelligence always surprised him.

“You had no trouble getting medical leave?” asked Higg.

“They understood completely.”

“I have one or two treasures,” said Dr. Higg. His voice was alive with pleasure. “There is this lovely golden circlet, Anglo-Saxon, although not from York. It looks, I think, like a moon in eclipse. It was found near Ely. Some say it belonged to one of the kings—perhaps the King of the Fenmen.”