I was about to find out what was buried on my land.
I knew there were no romantic ruins such as the crumbling Norman priory located on Lloyd's property next door, but I'd settle for some seventh century pottery shards.
And I knew my wife Jane would be thrilled—she loves ancient history, almost as much as getting her garden cleared.
So, bright and early the next day, I was over at Lloyd’s, being taught how to operate the tractor. It wasn’t too difficult, and within half an hour, I was driving it home.
I spent the rest of the day using the cultivator attachment to turn over the soil and uproot the weeds and nettles.
By suppertime, I was proud of my work. The formerly overgrown yard looked like a freshly turned farmer’s field.
I returned the tractor, came home and had a light meal and fell asleep before the telly, watching the six o’clock news.
When I awoke it was dark. I grabbed a beer from the fridge and went out to sit on my back stoop and watch the Moon.
It was a glorious night. The Moon was sailing like a galleon on starry seas. A light breeze stirred the trees and the denuded landscape was filled with whispers from the fields.
And then I saw it—a shadowy figure near the trees.
At first I thought it was a trick of the light, but the closer I watched, I could discern the outline of a figure in hiding.
It appeared to be a fairly tall man who had concealed himself directly behind the trunk of a Beech tree.
I watched and waited, but he didn’t move. I decided to go inside and turn off the lights and observe him. I did, but he seemed to have disappeared.
I was edgy and checked the windows and locked the doors—something I had been negligent in doing before.
I even got out my police baton, consisting of black telescoping chrome tubes, given to me by an officer for protection when working in dangerous areas.
Finally, I just gave up and went to bed, with the baton safely tucked under my pillow.
The next morning, I felt foolish, but when I went out to work in the garden I checked for footprints behind the Beech tree and curiously found no trace, even in the fresh, newly turned soil.
Must have been my imagination, I convinced myself.
Just past eleven, a stake truck delivered two hundred rolls of sod and I spent the rest of the day laying these in neat rows.
Just before I stopped for the night, I had been laying sod near the trees, when my foot broke though some sandy soil and I went down to the top of my thigh.
I painfully extracted my right leg from the hole and lay back on the ground waiting for the pain to ease. I had definitely wrenched my ankle and was sure my leg would be black and blue.
I peered into the hole and could make out some sort of stonework below.
I limped back to the house, grabbed two beers and an ice pack from the fridge, and plopped them on the end table. Then I sat in the sofa chair, elevated my leg and applied the ice.
I fell asleep almost immediately and didn’t awake until early the next morning.
I stayed indoors most of the day, but was resolved to explore the hole.
In the early afternoon I took a spade and went out to dig where I broke through the soil. After a few spadefuls, it was clear—I was looking at an ancient burial.
The large ‘bump’ I ran the cultivator over was a barrow—a stone walled grave with a ditch around it and soil heaped on top of it forming a mini hill. Inside were the bones of a young man no more than twenty years of age.
It was obviously a princely burial, because there was a knife, a shield, a green glass goblet and over fifty coins of Merovingian origin. I extracted the thighbone and sent it to London for carbon dating analysis.
I was supposed to transmit data about the skeletal remains to the national skeletal data bank, but something stopped me.
I decided to await the results of the carbon dating.
Within days, a colleague mailed back the bone with the dating results. The bone was from the mid-seventh century. It was definitely Anglo-Saxon.
The mystery began to deepen along with my fear that something or someone was lurking out there in the fields—fields I thought were mine, but now my ownership and control seemed in doubt.
My paranoia returned and I resigned myself to the prospect of spending another night with one eye open, and one hand grasping my police baton.