The Silver Witch

Tilda is unconvinced.

Lucas leans forward, elbows on the worn and polished wood of the table, concentrating on Tilda now, keen to share his theories regarding his discovery with her. ‘What we know for certain at this stage is that this is a double grave. There are two people buried here, both interred at the same time.’

‘Members of the same family?’ Tilda asks.

‘It’s possible, but … well, there are signs that suggest something rather different. You see, the bodies are lying not side by side, but one on top of the other. And only the lower one has a coffin. Which is unusual. As is the fact that there don’t appear to be any grave goods accompanying the upper body.’ Lucas waves his hands expressively as he talks, needing no prompting to explain further. ‘Given the date we believe the grave to have been dug, this is strange. Grave goods were things people put in with a deceased person that they believed they might need with them in the next life. Weapons, plates, jewels, things that would mark out their status, signs of wealth or standing in society as well.’

‘And your grave…’ Tilda corrects herself. ‘Sorry, the one you’ve found … there are none of these things in it?’

‘There may be some in the coffin below, we don’t know yet. But the body nearer the surface appears to have been buried without any possessions whatsoever.’

‘Perhaps they were very poor,’ Tilda suggests. ‘Maybe they didn’t have anything to take with them.’

‘It is possible, but unlikely. Most people would have had something. Or if they didn’t, relatives or community members would have provided at least the most basic items. It is odd to find a body with nothing at all. Unless…’

‘Ah, food!’ Dylan alerts them to the arrival of the meals. Tilda is torn between her desire to tuck into the first decent plate of food she has seen in a very long time, and her wish to know what it is that Lucas is hinting at. Muttering thanks to the young waiter, who blushes when she finds him gawking at her, she presses Lucas to finish his thought.

‘Unless?’

‘Unless the person we’ve found was executed. If the killing was a punishment, the carrying out of a sentence for some sort of crime, then the culprit would not have been allowed any grave goods. It would have been part of the punishment. An important part, as it condemned the executed person to struggle and hardship in the next life too.’

‘I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade,’ Dylan says, liberally sprinkling salt on his chips, ‘but there could be a much simpler explanation.’

‘Such as?’ The irritation is plain in Lucas’s voice.

‘The person in the coffin took all the stuff with him or her. The second person, the one on top, wasn’t buried at the same time, but a little while later. That person had nothing left, couldn’t afford a coffin or a decent burial, but wanted to be in the same place as their loved one. Still happens today, after all, people being buried in extra-deep graves so that their spouse can be laid to rest in the same spot when they eventually die.’

Lucas gives him a weary look and adopts the voice of a tired parent addressing a bothersome child. ‘In the first place, we know roughly when the grave was dug—somewhere between 850 and 950 AD—and at that time couples were always buried side by side, no matter how many years after the first one died the second one joined them. Stacking bodies was a tactic employed because of a lack of space. By the Victorian era, for example, there simply wasn’t room to put people next to each other, particularly in urban areas. Hundreds of years before that, out in the countryside, when the population was a fraction of what it is now, space wasn’t an issue. In fact’—he pauses to enjoy a mouthful of shepherd’s pie before going on—‘it would have been much easier to dig two shallow graves side by side than one deeper one. Anyway, there is a more compelling reason to suppose this was a punishment killing.’

Tilda hurriedly snatches at some chips while she waits for Lucas to go on. He has paused again, in part to eat some of his food, but more, she suspects, for dramatic effect. And possibly to annoy Dylan.

‘The body near the surface is prone, not supine.’ He waits, clearly hoping one of them will ask what that means. Eventually he saves them the trouble. ‘It was buried facedown, not faceup. Hardly a respectful and dignified way to treat a corpse. And as if that weren’t enough, a very large, very heavy flat stone was placed on the back of the deceased.’

‘To hold him or her in place?’ Dylan gives a light laugh. ‘Hardly seems necessary if they were dead.’

‘But very necessary if they were still alive,’ Lucas points out.