The Janus Stone

‘Some things never change,’ she says to Max as they make their way back to the path through the dunes. It is too dangerous to cross the Saltmarsh after dark; they must take the birdwatchers’ trail, a raised shingle path that leads back to the car park. Max has left his car there. Ruth hopes he will give her a lift home and won’t expect to come in for coffee.

‘Interesting rhyme,’ says Max in his tutorial voice. ‘It’s thought that Pussy refers to a prostitute.’

‘What are they doing, drowning her?’

‘Probably a version of a ducking stool.’

‘How does it go? “Who put her in? Little Johnny Green”.’

‘“Who pulled her out? Little Jimmy Stout”. Something like that.’

‘Who was Jimmy then? Her pimp?’

Max laughs. ‘I like you, Ruth,’ he says.

There’s no answer to that. ‘I like you too’ would sound impossibly arch. Changing the subject would sound like a snub. And she does like him. How much, she doesn’t really want to consider. It’s all so complicated, that’s the problem. She is pregnant with someone else’s baby. That someone else is married and doesn’t even know that she is pregnant. He will probably be furious when he finds out. Or will he maybe, just maybe, be pleased? Recently Ruth has been fantasising that the baby is a boy. Perhaps Nelson has always wanted a boy, will be delighted, will leave Michelle… Hang on, though, does she even want him to leave Michelle? On balance, she doesn’t. She would feel horribly guilty at breaking up the family and she is not sure if she ever wants to live with a man again. Especially a man as large as Nelson.

This is ridiculous anyway. Nelson doesn’t love her and never has done. Their night together had been the result of a unique set of circumstances. They had just found the body of a dead child, Nelson had had to break the news to the family. For that one night it seemed as if Ruth and Nelson were alone in the world. Nelson had come to Ruth wanting comfort; the passion had surprised both of them. But Nelson has never, before or since, given any sign that he thinks of Ruth as anything other than a colleague, a fellow professional, perhaps even a friend. Why, then, is she thinking of him now, as Max takes her hand to help her over a stile? Does Max remind her of Nelson? He’s a very different person; an academic, soft-spoken and courteous, but, physically, there is something. Like Nelson, Max has presence. It is not just that he is tall. It is more that, if he is in the room, you can’t really look at anyone else. Phil faded into insignificance beside him and even Cathbad seemed several shades paler.

‘Listen,’ says Max suddenly, ‘an owl.’ They are passing the first hide. These wooden huts for birdwatchers are placed at strategic points on the marsh – this one is on stilts looking out over a freshwater lake. Ruth hears the wind whispering in the reeds and thinks for the hundredth, thousandth, time of that wild night on the Saltmarsh when an owl’s call lured a man to his death. Around them lies water, dark and sullen, interspersed with marshy islands. Ruth shivers and Max makes a gesture as if he is going to put his arm round her but thinks better of it. ‘Almost there,’ is all he says.

The car park is pitch black and deserted apart from Max’s Range Rover. Inside it is blessedly warm and Ruth almost cries with happiness at the prospect of sitting down again. Is it normal for a pregnant person’s back to ache this much? Perhaps it’s because she’s overweight.

Max negotiates the turn into the narrow road that leads to the cottages. He’s a careful driver. In this respect, at least, he’s nothing like Nelson.

‘It was quite something, wasn’t it?’ he says. ‘The bonfire and the Druids and everything.’

‘Yes,’ says Ruth, ‘you can’t go wrong with a fire for spectacle. I suppose that’s why people used to worship it. Fire wards off the dark.’

‘Like the cry of the cockerel,’ says Max.

Ruth shoots him a curious look. ‘Why do you say that?’

For a second Max looks straight ahead, squinting at the dark road. Then he says, ‘Something that happened on the dig yesterday. I was just seeing off some sightseers. The Historical Society this time, I think. And I found a dead cockerel in one of the trenches.’

Ruth doesn’t know what to say. She is dimly aware that the neighbouring farms might keep hens but she can’t think how a bird can have wandered onto Max’s site, isolated as it is behind its grassy bank.

‘Was it left there deliberately?’

He gives a short laugh. ‘I’d say so, yes. Its throat had been cut.’

‘What?’

‘Slit from side to side. Very neat job.’

For one awful moment Ruth thinks she is going to be sick. She takes a deep breath.

‘Why would anyone want to do that?’

They have reached Ruth’s cottage. Max turns off the ignition. ‘Well a cockerel’s a fairly traditional sacrifice. Because they crow in the morning, they’re supposed to have power to hold back the darkness. That’s what I meant earlier.’

Ruth’s head is swimming. ‘A sacrifice? Why would anyone leave a sacrifice on an archaeological dig?’