Chapter 3—A Soldier's Bones
The sun was rising, blinding the boy as he headed down a wider gravelled path through the main part of the graveyard. Steam was rising off the roof-slates of the church and the row of neighbouring cottages. Millions of sun-lit beads of water-droplets sparkled at the tips of grass leaves. The boy stopped to watch a song-thrush bashing the life out of a snail, using the red marble plinth of a grave as an anvil. A female blackbird landed on a granite crucifix, clucking a note of apprehension as she cocked her tail like a flickering metronome. She could be one of the birds who'd just helped to chase the barn owl away. The burial-ground was a haven for wildlife, with more than fifty species of mammals and birds having been recorded.
The church itself was blessed or cursed with its own colony of birds inside, house-sparrows who took over the eaves generations before, and who came and went to the outdoors by various circuitous routes, which several vicars were unable to completely block. The sparrows vied for air-space with a colony of pipistrelle bats. Services could be risky to attend, especially when the organ music reached a crescendo that put the birds to flight, or at dusk when the bats took to the wing. Many a congregation member had been besmirched, and it paid not to look up!
Foxes dug an earth under the gardener's shed, which was allowed to remain on the theory that they might control the large resident rabbit population. The foxes were rather smelly, but the vicar preferred natural methods of keeping rodents away. Though he had to draw the line at allowing badgers to move in to the graveyard. He liked all creatures, but their sett-building activities disturbed some graves, resulting in human bones emerging to the surface. This wasn't on, so the vicar arranged for the colony to be trapped by the local nature conservation trust and moved to woodland suitable to sustain them. The disinterred bones were quietly reburied, using educated guesses as to which grave they'd come from.
The boy noticed a few elongated tracks in the dewy grass, drag-marks that looked like an elf on snow-shoes had made his way through. They'd been left by several rabbits, who were contentedly munching a moist breakfast a few yards away. The boy was glad that he'd spotted them before his dog, as he was excitable and loved chasing bunnies. He was on his lead, of course, but he'd still have pulled fit to pop the boy's arm out of its socket. Positioning the dog closer to his leg, shielding the rabbits from view, the boy looked up at the church-spire.
This edifice could be seen for miles around, and was a useful landmark to navigate by. It was the highest spire in the county and had been built by the Normans, who also contributed the impressive entrance-door and central tower of the building. Nine other styles of architecture were present in the church, so it really was a work-in-progress. An appeal was under-way for funds to build a function-room extension. The boy wasn't really religious—being forced to attend church every Sunday instilled a distaste for the dogma, but his love of the building and graveyard was strong.
Water-vapour was rising from the grass all around him, which looked a little eerie, but proved to be of interest to his dog who snapped at the fumes like a fool, afterwards snaffling an experimental drink from the surface. A kestrel arced overhead, and as the boy watched it braked to a halt, its wings scything the still chilly air taking station to scour the grass below for any errant shrews or mice.
His dog was patient and used to the boy pausing to observe wild life. The boy was similarly understanding when his hound insisted on a full diagnosis of some smell he'd detected. This was particularly true since the previous winter when his canine companion proved to be annoyingly obstinate over moving on from a scent that was captivating him. The boy avoided thinking too closely about what odours were wafting up his dog's nose, but assumed that they may have come from a bitch in heat who had left her calling-card. The boy was anxious to get around the corner and on up the road—it was a school-day.
It was furiously windy, producing a bothersome maelstrom that was sure to irritate, so the boy tried to be extra empathic with his dog, who was behaving very strangely not wanting to move on. He was crouching down in a hunched almost submissive way, so the boy resorted to giving his dog a reassuring pat to ease him onward. He was still little more than a puppy, but wasn't usually this scared of high-winds—surely they wouldn't have to return home? At that point he heard a loud crash, and felt a tremor through the paving-stones—there were calls of alarm and car horns sounding.
Rounding the bend, the boy was astonished to see a tall Lombardy Poplar lying across the pavement and up the narrow tarmacked lane. The fifty foot tall tree was one of his favourites, and stood alone by the entry to a narrow footpath which ran along the back of the luxury homes on the lane and on to some cow-pasture. Its elegant form was now laying slapped flat, and hordes of stunned creatures were emerging from its finger-like branches. Small birds, mice, voles, shrews and squirrels staggered, scampered and flapped away from what had evidently been a sheltering high-rise in the sky. The trunk was broken off some five feet from the ground, its core riddled with tan-brown fungal-rot.
The boy loved to watch the tapered shape of the poplar swaying in the wind, but he was glad that he hadn't been too close to it today. Nearby residents emerged from their homes and were looking on agog. A car was wedged in the top of the tree, fortunately being able to slow enough that the driver wasn't injured. One of the onlookers was helping him to open his car door, which was held shut by the forward-facing branches.
Had his dog sensed something—perhaps heard the weakened trunk groaning its imminent failure? Whatever the case, his stubbornness in halting saved them from being crushed by the tree. From that moment on the boy let his dog sniff all the smells he fancied!
The hunting kestrel moved on, angling away from the graveyard to try its luck over the ploughed fields. The boy shook his dog's lead making the identity tag rattle on his collar, encouraging him away from lapping at the wet grass. Perhaps they'd go home via the new and old avenues, instead of down the lane, which would allow the dog some more exercise off the leash. Crunching down the path, the boy observed an unusual sight ahead of them.
He was surprised to see a freshly-dug grave right next to the path. But it was in a part of the grounds long since filled. It was abutting a historical grave section, he could see from the old-fashioned horizontal wooden marker that served to identify some of the more ancient burials. He didn't think that there could possibly be a fresh internment due to happen. No one had been buried here for hundreds of years.
Drawing closer, the boy could see that the ground around the grave's plot was indented, a concave of grass with a gaping oblong at its centre. Taking care not to leave the stability of the path, the boy leaned over to look six feet down into the bottom of the grave. It was more like ten feet, for the soil was collapsed in on itself in a geometric sinkhole. Tendrils of roots from yew trees and a holly bush poked through the sides of the grave.
At the base of the grave there were some splinters of rotten wood, presumably the coffin, and among them some soil-stained bones, which looked like ribs and a femur. It was all very brown, the earth looking almost obscenely rich. A few beetles were running around and worms waved languorously at the light. Of the skull there was no trace, which the boy was rather glad about, as this was weird enough as it was.
Then he had a thought—surely there couldn't have been grave-robbers, sick souvenir-hunters at it, who might have already taken the skull? He looked at the grass around the plot again, but there were no traces of human footprints, and anyway how would anyone be able to reach that far down to plunder the grave?
The historic grave-marker was adorned with a curlicue inscription which identified the three burials in this plot as belonging to unknown soldiers from the English Civil War, 1641-1651. The nearest battle that the boy knew about took place fifteen miles away, but he guessed that there would have been running skirmishes all over the place. Perhaps these soldiers were injured and trying to make it home before dying. Or maybe they sought refuge in
this very church? They could be local men, even ancestors of his. That made the boy really think. He knew that he'd been born in a hotel at which both Charles ll and Oliver Cromwell lodged at different times, as the fortunes of the war swayed, so he could now be standing above one of his relatives. It wasn't that far beyond the realms of possibility.
The torrential rainfall the night before must have weakened the earth, allowing the collapse. Perhaps the intrusive roots clawed fractures through the soil too, and there were sometimes mole-hills on the grass, so their tunnels wouldn't have helped matters. The grave-marker didn't say what army the dead soldiers belonged to, Roundheads or Cavaliers, but it didn't really matter, did it? They deserved some respect now.
He couldn't just leave the exposed remains like this. His dog was sniffing the air in an interested manner. There were times when he was really glad that he didn't have that sensitive a sense of smell. Surely a centuries-old grave couldn't smell of that much? But dogs did like bones….