can these bones live? Part 2

I was about to find out what was buried on my land.

I knew there were no romantic ruins such as the crumbling Norman priory located on Lloyd's property next door, but I'd settle for some seventh century pottery shards.

And I knew my wife Jane would be thrilled—she loves ancient history, almost as much as getting her garden cleared.

So, bright and early the next day, I was over at Lloyd’s, being taught how to operate the tractor. It wasn’t too difficult, and within half an hour, I was driving it home.

I spent the rest of the day using the cultivator attachment to turn over the soil and uproot the weeds and nettles.

By suppertime, I was proud of my work. The formerly overgrown yard looked like a freshly turned farmer’s field.

I returned the tractor, came home and had a light meal and fell asleep before the telly, watching the six o’clock news.

When I awoke it was dark. I grabbed a beer from the fridge and went out to sit on my back stoop and watch the Moon.

It was a glorious night. The Moon was sailing like a galleon on starry seas. A light breeze stirred the trees and the denuded landscape was filled with whispers from the fields.

And then I saw it—a shadowy figure near the trees.

At first I thought it was a trick of the light, but the closer I watched, I could discern the outline of a figure in hiding.

It appeared to be a fairly tall man who had concealed himself directly behind the trunk of a Beech tree.

I watched and waited, but he didn’t move. I decided to go inside and turn off the lights and observe him. I did, but he seemed to have disappeared.

I was edgy and checked the windows and locked the doors—something I had been negligent in doing before.

I even got out my police baton, consisting of black telescoping chrome tubes, given to me by an officer for protection when working in dangerous areas.

Finally, I just gave up and went to bed, with the baton safely tucked under my pillow.

The next morning, I felt foolish, but when I went out to work in the garden I checked for footprints behind the Beech tree and curiously found no trace, even in the fresh, newly turned soil.

Must have been my imagination, I convinced myself.

Just past eleven, a stake truck delivered two hundred rolls of sod and I spent the rest of the day laying these in neat rows.

Just before I stopped for the night, I had been laying sod near the trees, when my foot broke though some sandy soil and I went down to the top of my thigh.

I painfully extracted my right leg from the hole and lay back on the ground waiting for the pain to ease. I had definitely wrenched my ankle and was sure my leg would be black and blue.

I peered into the hole and could make out some sort of stonework below.

I limped back to the house, grabbed two beers and an ice pack from the fridge, and plopped them on the end table. Then I sat in the sofa chair, elevated my leg and applied the ice.

I fell asleep almost immediately and didn’t awake until early the next morning.

I stayed indoors most of the day, but was resolved to explore the hole.

In the early afternoon I took a spade and went out to dig where I broke through the soil. After a few spadefuls, it was clear—I was looking at an ancient burial.

The large ‘bump’ I ran the cultivator over was a barrow—a stone walled grave with a ditch around it and soil heaped on top of it forming a mini hill. Inside were the bones of a young man no more than twenty years of age.

It was obviously a princely burial, because there was a knife, a shield, a green glass goblet and over fifty coins of Merovingian origin. I extracted the thighbone and sent it to London for carbon dating analysis.

I was supposed to transmit data about the skeletal remains to the national skeletal data bank, but something stopped me.

I decided to await the results of the carbon dating.

Within days, a colleague mailed back the bone with the dating results. The bone was from the mid-seventh century. It was definitely Anglo-Saxon.

The mystery began to deepen along with my fear that something or someone was lurking out there in the fields—fields I thought were mine, but now my ownership and control seemed in doubt.

My paranoia returned and I resigned myself to the prospect of spending another night with one eye open, and one hand grasping my police baton.

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