The Silver Witch

‘What?’ Tilda is aghast. ‘You mean that the person who was executed was punished not just by being killed, but by being buried alive?’ All at once she can feel her appetite fading.

Lucas shrugs and tucks into his meal with enthusiasm. ‘Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, just what crime they must have committed to have deserved such a fate?’

A thoughtful silence descends on the table, during which Tilda attempts to rekindle her appetite. The steak and kidney pudding is delicious, and soon the nourishing food, the heat from the fire, and the small amount of alcohol in her shandy soothes her into a more pleasant state of mind and body than she has experienced for quite a while. Even so, the notion of such a gruesome execution taking place so close to home disturbs her. Could the ghost be the spirit of the body the archeologists are so intent on unearthing?

It would explain why my visitor is so angry.

‘Will you be able to find out who exactly it is you’ve dug up?’ she asks Lucas as he polishes off the last of his pie.

He shakes his head. ‘Highly unlikely. Very few written records exist for tenth-century Wales, and a lot of what there is would have been written sometime after the events, so it’s pretty unreliable. At least if you want specifics. So, no, basically, we are not going to be able to give you name, rank and serial number. What we hope to do—what lovely, lovely science now enables us to have a stab at—is to say male or female, age, cause of death, health and diet during life, and, possibly, position in their community. Given that this looks like an execution, we may get more clues when we reach the coffin below.’

‘Would the two deaths necessarily be connected?’

‘There is a precedent. There was a grave in the southeast of England found with a similarly dispatched guilty party on top, and studies strongly indicate that the body below was the victim of the crime. So, it’s possible our upper-level remains are those of a murderer, and the body in the coffin was murdered by them. But we are getting ahead of ourselves,’ he warns her, washing down his food with some mineral water. ‘Lots to search for yet. Lots to prove, or disprove.’ He might have been about to say more, but Molly looks up from her laptop on the next table and calls him over to see something.

Thistle, relaxed at last, begins to show an interest in the food. She gets up and stretches lazily, before reaching up to sniff the edge of the table, her nose twitching. Tilda smiles at her.

‘I’ll save some for you, I promise,’ she says, handing her a chip to keep hunger pangs at bay.

Dylan watches. ‘She’s looking better. You’ve done a good job of getting her right.’

Tilda considers the corner-shop diet she has been feeding the dog, the irregular hours of sleep and the erratic exercise patterns she has been subjected to. ‘I think she pretty much got better by herself,’ she says. ‘Though I can see why the men who had her gave up. No way is she ever going to catch a hare.’

‘She looks built for it.’

‘Maybe so, but when we came across one the other day she bounced after it and then just played with it. Had no intention of catching the thing. And the hare knew it too.’

‘Really?’ Dylan raises his eyebrows.

‘I swear, it just sat there, washing its face. It knew it wasn’t in any danger. Thistle didn’t even bark.’

‘Well, she wouldn’t. Proper coursers don’t. They hunt silently. That’s why they make rubbish guard dogs. They don’t track by scent either—they’re sight hounds. Though yours is probably just shy ’cause she’s embarrassed about wearing that collar.’

Much as it irks her to admit it, the pink band does look all wrong around Thistle’s neck. Tilda leans forward and unbuckles it. ‘I don’t think you really need this, do you, girl?’

‘Much better,’ Dylan says.

Tilda looks at him. ‘Why are you helping with the dig, if you really don’t like what they’re doing? And don’t tell me it’s for the money. Your uncle said you go all over the world diving for people. Doesn’t sound like you’re short of work.’

He smiles, shaking his head. ‘To be honest, I jumped at the chance of an excuse to come home for a while. I miss the place. ‘Away’ is not always all it’s cracked up to be.’

‘So you’re okay with them opening a grave?’

‘I can’t really disapprove, can I? It is more or less what I poke around in too, a lot of the time. Not formal graves, maybe, but wrecks often end up being the final resting places for many people. Some of them have been there a very long time too.’

‘You’re surely not expecting to find a wreck in the lake?’

He laughs. ‘No. This is more of an exploratory bit of diving. The lake has been fairly thoroughly searched over the years, but now they’ve found something new so near to the water, well, it’s worth having another look. The changing levels of the water, particularly if there have been floods as well as droughts, can shift things. New stuff becomes visible. Just! It’s pretty murky down there.’

‘I read that the lake has its own water horse.’

‘Gorsie, you mean?’