Ghost Wall(21)

We dug more burdocks, and then went up onto the moor for bilberries, which was of course the wrong way round, like shopping for ten pounds of potatoes before you go all the way across town to the post office. We could just leave them under a hedge, I said, to pick up on the way back, it’s hardly likely anyone’s going to nick our burdock roots, especially with the stuff free for the taking all over the place. I suppose that’s what those caches were for, said Dan, the little stone mounds, not so much long-term storage as somewhere to leave your potatoes while you go to the post office. But we weren’t sure which way we’d be coming back or where we’d find bilberries or, in the absence of a prehistoric cist, how we’d remember which hedge we’d used, so the burdocks came too, dragging on our arms. We didn’t go to Spar, but apart from that the day felt like a repetition of the one before, the rhythms of finding and gathering, walking and squatting, talking and scattering. I found that my fingers knew how to pick the ripe berries without my mind needing to think about it, that I had learnt to see what was under the leaves or shaded by heather without consciously searching. I indulged myself with the idea that ancient knowledge runs somehow in our blood, that in time I could forget who fought in the War of the Spanish Succession and how to solve simultaneous equations, and remember how to spin yarn and grind grain, to read the flight of birds and the growth of plants to tell me what was happening beyond my sight. My father’s skills: redundant except for archaeological purposes.

But when we got back, they were not busy about subsistence, nor communing with the natural world. Mum was hanging over her cauldron again and the guys were playing with big sticks, too long for firewood, and willow withies which they must have got from one of the three big trees in the field below. The sheep took refuge under them on hot days. Jesus, said Molly, they’ve actually made themselves Lego, haven’t they, I suppose it’s better than cowboys and Indians. Allies and Huns, I said, was the version we played at my primary school, I’ve sometimes wondered about that, if all the five-year-olds in England were still playing at bombing Germany in the late ’70s or if other towns had moved on. The boys used to run around the playground with their arms wide, making bomb noises. Yeah, she said, we did that too, it is weird, do you think American kids had moved on to Vietnam? No, I said, from what I gather they mostly have real artillery and just shoot each other properly. Anyway, it won’t be Lego, it’s probably some kind of war-game. Iron Age cowboys and Indians.

I was only bloody right. We’re seeing if we can make a ghost wall, said the Prof, sitting back on his haunches. I was just telling your dad, it’s what one of the local tribes tried as a last-ditch defence against the Romans, they made a palisade and brought out their ancestral skulls and arrayed them along the top, dead faces gazing down, it was their strongest magic. Wait, said Molly, ancestral skulls? He put down his willow twigs. You know about this, Molly, we did it last term, I must say I thought it would be memorable. Two lectures, third week? Fragmented Bodies and Using Your Heads? I remember, said Pete, who was plaiting fronds of willow in a way that looked even less useful than what anyone else was doing. Good man, said the Prof. Anyway Molly, some tribes seem to have decapitated their dead and preserved the heads, in some cases for centuries, and had them on display indoors, somewhere where there were fires, maybe in the rafters of their houses. You can tell from the accumulation of soot and smoke. And Tacitus passes on a story about the skulls being used in battle somewhere around here, up by the Wall. Did the Romans notice, asked Moll, I shouldn’t have thought they’d be put off by some old bones. The Prof leant forward again. He was interlacing willow to make some kind of fence-panel. Well, obviously they noticed enough for the story to get passed to Tacitus, but no, you’re right, it doesn’t seem to have bothered them. They approached in testudo formation, he said, you know, the tortoise effect under the wall of shields, and probably barely even saw the skulls. But it’s a powerful idea, isn’t it, and it speaks to the importance of human remains to the culture. Yeah, said Molly, erm, did you get anything to eat, any meat or fish? Dad looked up. Thought you’d gone vegetarian, any road.

Their failure to hunt did not seem to me the most obvious problem with the plan. Dad, I said, er, Professor Slade, what are you going to do for human remains? For your fence? Oh, said Mum, I’m boiling up the rabbits’ heads. And Professor Slade stopped at the meat market, there’s a couple of sheep’s skulls and a cow’s, not to mention skin for the drums. Dan snorted and then coughed and snorted again. What, he said, ghost rabbits, you serious? With their little teeth? He made a rabbit face and Molly giggled. Tortoise formation, she said, wonder who’ll get there first. That’s a hare, dumbo, said Dan. I could see Dad’s face darken. Don’t, I thought, don’t laugh at him, it won’t be you who catches it, don’t make him feel stupid. Yes, well, said the Prof, the university does have an Ethics Committee, not sure I’d get away with using undergraduates for the purpose though you never know, maybe we could do it to people who cheat in exams. What did you bring us, Molly? More delicious burdock, she said, I hear it’s especially good with rabbits’ brains, and bilberries for those of more delicate disposition, by which I mean me. Dad muttered. You’ll eat what you’re given, girl. I beg your pardon, Mr Hampton, said Molly, I didn’t catch that. My stomach clenched. Stop it, you don’t know what you’re stirring up, you have no idea how this goes, you can’t speak to him like that. I said, Dad said, looking up, enunciating clearly, I said picky lasses went hungry, back then, I said it weren’t for the likes of you to say who gets what. Ah, um, said the Prof, well, as I said I don’t know that we can really reflect the gender hierarchies of prehistory here, inasmuch as we know what they might have been, I’m sure Molly meant no harm, plenty of berries to go round, aren’t there, Moll and Silvie do you want to – to go – well, why don’t you go see if you can find a little more of that wild thyme, hmm, I’m afraid we’ve rather distracted Alison, may be a while before there’s cooked food so you two just have a little potter up the stream, hm, see what you come by?