point is, Carter,’ I said, ‘if they found an early Christian cross in this grave tomorrow, they’d have to believe.’
‘But they’re not going to find any such thing, are they,’ he said. ‘They might,’ I said. ‘You never know. If you come back to my house tonight I can show you all sorts of early Christian references. If you add mercury to the silver mix they always assume it’s old silver. Should anyone take it into their head to do any testing.’
‘I know all about that,’ he said. ‘I had a job once faking old clock faces. “Restoring” they called it, but from what they charged, I called it faking. I came down here to Rumer to live a more honest life.’
‘Two wrongs don’t make a right,’ said Pam, primly, but she didn’t sound very convinced.
‘I don’t think we’d better tell Matt,’ said Susie. ‘He’s such a stickler.’
‘You can’t do this,’ said Pam.
‘Yes we can,’ I said. ‘Then they can give these bodies a decent burial and we can all get some peace and some sleep.’
I bent down and picked out of the grave what looked like a sliver of wood, or had once been wood, in a blackened kind of way. And I gave it to Carter Wainwright and he put it in his pocket.
‘Give it the trace of a wooden frame,’ I said, ‘just to confuse the issue.’
I noticed my blistered fingers were getting better. Touch had been quite painful and cooking the children’s chicken dinner had been hell. Carter Wainwright came back with me for the books and a certain amount of canoodling did take place, I must say, before he took his leave. I didn’t want to be a burden to my children: a silversmith and a sculptor could live fairly amicably together. And he swore his name was truly Carter Wainwright and I believed him.
In the morning my back was better and my fingers unblistered and smooth. This is what a little sex can do for you, I concluded. And amazingly, it started to rain. You could practically see the lettuces breathe the moisture in, and their hearts swell and curl and firm. All the animals went out into the wet, which was rather unusual for them, and skittered about in pleasure. The ground was parched, how it drank in the rain.
I went down to the site with the children. Now that there were news teams and cameras and journalists with notebooks, they took more interest. Apparently a Christian cross, a Chi Rho, made of silver and wood, had been found in the grave of one of the centurions. They reckoned the sudden rain had loosened the earth, which was why they hadn’t seen it before. No-one had expected rain; it certainly hadn’t been forecast, and it was only local.
Harrison Ford from Nottingham was in a foul mood. This was the last thing he had wanted. Pam reckoned he was on some sort of performance bonus. He was in conference with his friend from Riley management, Marcus Dubiddy; I saw the Chi Rho lying on a piece of plastic by the grave while they argued. Both men looked thoroughly cross.
The rain had stopped pelting and now drifted in a kind of warm gentle misty shroud over the site. Those of us in jeans and T-shirts were at an advantage over the suits, whose ties began to look flabby very quickly. My son Joel even consented to join the dustpan and brush brigade, volunteers rounded up locally to help the Birmingham students sieve the ribboned-off sections of the site. They had at least five minutes’ training before setting to. At least there was stuff to find: oyster shells, bits of metal and broken Samian ware, all of which were being catalogued, plastic-bagged,and logged. Faster, faster, urged the overseers. They must cover more ground, more quickly. I felt protective of him, as if he were being whipped to build a pyramid.
Joel eavesdropped on Dubiddy’s conversation—I had been marked out as a troublemaker. The Chi Rho was to be sent by courier to the British Museum and they’d date it as a matter of urgency, and value it.
I must admit we panicked, Carter, Pam, Susie and I. We were to be discovered. The silver would be traced back to Carter: my involvement would be suspected. We had forged an early Christian cross. They would think it was some elaborate plan to make money out of the tourist trade. They would not believe our motives. Who nowadays would put themselves out to get a few old dry bones a Christian burial?
We drank too much Chilean red that night, round at my place, to quell our nerves and celebrate the removal of the triptych to Canterbury Cathedral. The carriers had come that day. The more we thought about it the more delinquent our forgery seemed, and indeed impertinent. The Roman legions came from all over the world: the centurion could have belonged to any of a dozen faiths. Many worshipped Mithras, the Sun God. Susie said she didn’t think he was a Mithraic, see, it was still gently raining; surely Mithras would have honoured his own? It was fine enough over the rest of the country: only our graves dwelt in this gentle, moist, life-giving Christian mist.
Matt, usually so wary of Pam, for his sort and her sort do not usually agree, came up and drank with us, and they told each other jokes. Susie became quite pink and giggled: Carter decided he had fallen in love with me; the children persuaded me to take in a stray cat who kept trying to live with us, while I tried to let her know, tactfully and firmly, that it was not to be. That night there was a terrific thunderstorm and lightning struck the village shop. The postmistress said it was the spirits of the unburied dead up there on the site bringing bad luck.
The British Museum sent an e-mail to Harrison’s laptop the next day. The Chi Ro was genuine. Two thousand years old, give or take a decade or two. Riley’s put out a press release. Carter was beside himself with pleasure. Not only had he had found me but he was one of the greatest forgers alive.
The next day the press turned up in force. Priceless, or at any rate in the region of several million pounds. We could say nothing, and we had won nothing. It was too late. Riley’s put guards on the site and strung a barbed wire fence around it. But still the bones were to go to Birmingham the next day. And within hours after that the skimming would continue and the vast screed would be laid, and that would be the end of our history, not to mention the nesting sites of the greater crested warbler, et cetera.
Then a Canon from Canterbury rang me to congratulate me on the triptych, and I think he meant it. I bought up the matter of the graves.
‘If they’ve found a Chi Rho in a Roman soldier’s grave,’ I said, ‘and the British Museum has validated it, then can’t we just accept that the dead soldier is a Christian? Sure, he might have stolen the cross, but for that matter he could have been present at the Crucifixion.’
It was amazing with what equanimity I could lie. I put it down to being in love. The Canon hummed and hawed and then all of a sudden cheered up, and said of course. He would be happy to do some kind of service of reconciliation, before the bones were bagged. He’d get through to the Rumer parish priest. I said they’d have to be quick. He said the Church could be if it had to be.
