Chapter Seventeen
Emily hurried ahead to the excavation site, her peace cut up by Bidenden’s insinuations. She arrived somewhat breathless and agitated, which didn’t help when she learned just how dangerous the next phase of the tree removal was.
The tree had taken root at the base of the sloping ground, and its trunk was twisted and angled in such a way that the main trunk lay more or less parallel with the slope of the mound itself.
The morning’s work had pared the tree back from the mound.
For this part of the operation, guy ropes braced the main trunk that would assist them in bringing the rest of the tree down in what was intended to be a controlled fall.
Emily, watching from a safe distance with the other women, fervently hoped they would.
Smiggens, being the only one of them with experience in felling trees, was going to make the cuts into the trunk that would bring it down, and the men would manage the guy ropes that should guide its descent.
Smiggens began his chopping on the east side of the tree, the side away from the barrow.
He made a wedge-shaped cut in the trunk with his axe.
Then he moved to the side and Deo and Kenrick stepped forward with the double ended saw that would cut through to the hinge from the barrow side of the tree, as Deo had explained over lunch.
Smiggens’s job was to tell them when to stop.
Because of the lean of the trunk and its being butted up against the sloping ground of the mound, they were forced to work in a difficult position, one foot higher than the other and bent to get to the base of the trunk under the curve.
Fortunately, both men were extremely strong. Em watched the sweat bleeding through Deo’s shirt as his massive shoulders worked to pull the axe through the wood of the old tree. It took some time, but eventually Smiggens held up his hand and said, “Stop!”
With visible relief, the two men pulled the saw free of the trunk and stepped back. Now came the most dangerous part of the endeavour. The three men scrambled clear of the tree and took up the guy ropes on one side of the tree. The duke, the viscount, and Bidenden held the ropes on the other side.
“Ready, gentlemen?” called Deo.
“Aye,” came the chorus of replies. “On a count of three, tug firmly,” he said. He paused and then began the count. “One. Two. Three. Heave!”
The tree wavered a bit on its base and the women held their collective breaths, holding each other’s hands for support.
Then it began to fall at a south-easterly angle.
This was in the opposite direction from Deo’s position on the north-east side, thank God, but it was heading dangerously in the direction of the other three men.
As it was on the other side of the mound from Emily’s position, she couldn’t actually see the men who were standing on that side, but horror built as the hinge cracked through, and the great tree wobbled, slid off its base, and crashed to the ground in a cloud of dirt, leaves and debris, to the accompanying shouts of the men and an agonized cry. Someone has been caught in the fall!
“Oh, God, Rob was on that side!” cried the duchess.
All three women, released from their position, picked up their skirts and raced around the base of the mound. The branches of the tree took up a lot of area, and they had to edge round them to find the spot where the men were clustered.
One of the men standing there was the duke, obviously unharmed.
“Rob!” the duchess hurried toward him with a cry of relief, and he received her with an arm round her waist. “Thank God! I thought it was you!” she said, pressing her face to his chest.
Emily, on her heels, barreled into Deo who was also standing there, grubby and sweaty but unharmed. “Deo! Who—?”
Deo turned to catch her with his arm, sleeves rolled up to the elbow.
“It’s Bidenden. We pulled him out.”
Emily put a hand to her mouth in shock and peered around the bodies of Kenrick and Ashford, who were bent over the prone form of Lord Bidenden. Smiggens was kneeling beside him and checking him over for injuries.
“Possibly bruised or broken ribs, I think,” he said. “If someone can give me something to bind his chest, I’ll wrap it to stop any movement until you can get him to the house and fetch a doctor.”
Emily removed her sash, “Here, will this do as a bandage?”
“Aye, thank you, my lady.”
She edged forward to kneel beside the fallen man.
He was ashen pale, and it was obvious he was in a deal of pain, his breathing was labored, and his face was sheened in sweat.
And like all of the men, he was generously daubed with dust and dirt.
His eyes were closed. Ashford produced a flask and said, “Take a drop of this, old chap.”
Bidenden opened his eyes and Emily leaned forward to hold his head while he took a mouthful of the flask’s contents, even that slight movement caused him to gasp with pain.
“Thank you,” he said huskily. His eyes flickered to Emily, and she saw surprise in his eyes as they rested on her.
His mouth twitched up in a wry smile. “Damned tree got me; I wasn’t quick enough to get out of its way. ”
“Smiggens is going to bind your chest until we can get a doctor to you,” she said, using a handkerchief to wipe his brow.
“Thank you,” he said again, his eyes closing.
Emily got to her feet, moving out of Smiggens’s way as he went to work on Bidenden.
She returned to Deo’s side and said quietly, “I have never been so terrified in my life. I was convinced that tree was going to crush you.”
Deo looked down at her, his expression strangely blank. “I was fine,” he said shortly. He moved away from her to inspect what was left of the tree stump. Emily, left standing there, watched him walk away from her, her heart contracting with pain. What is wrong?
*
Deo stared blindly at the stump of the tree embedded in the embankment of the rising mound, but it wasn’t what he was seeing.
He was playing over in his mind’s eye the sight of Emily kneeling beside Bidenden and wiping his brow!
Why would she do that? His muscles were shaking with fatigue, he was grubby and sweaty, and all the elation of success in getting the tree down had drained out of his toes at the sight of Emily tending to Bidenden, who lay like some fallen hero on a battlefield.
He swallowed against a too tight throat and realized he was desperately thirsty. He turned abruptly and went in search of the water flasks.
Smiggens had bound Bidenden’s ribs and the duke and Kenrick were carrying him back to the house.
He turned back to the mound and, seizing a spade, he began shoveling and scraping away the dirt round the base of the stump.
Only half the job was done—they had to get the stump out now.
The other men joined him after having drinks, and he assigned each a spot to dig round the stump, including the duke and Kenrick once they returned from the house.
They all worked solidly for an hour to expose the tangle of roots around the stump and hack the main arterial roots connecting the stump to the mound.
Then with ropes tied around the massive stump, they tried to pull it out backward down the slope.
But it wouldn’t budge. Eventually they figured out it was secured to the earth by a massive central root.
Once Deo hacked that away, the stump came out with a shower of soil and debris and the strong scent of damp earth.
A cheer went up from the men, with a round of applause from the ladies and calls of “Well done!”
At that point, the duke wiped his grubby face with an equally grubby handkerchief and said, “I think we’ve done enough for today.”
The viscount put his hands to his back and stretched. “I’m with you there, Rob. My back is killing me.”
“Beer and a bath,” said Kenrick with a grin. “In that order.”
Deo nodded. “Thank you for your help. We couldn’t have done this without you. Particularly you, Smiggens,” he said, offering his hand to the older man.
Smiggens flushed and murmured, “Glad to be of help, my lord.”
The duke and the viscount collected their wives and headed off followed by Kenrick.
Deo turned back to the raw earth embankment they had exposed in this side of the barrow. They had dug down and into the barrow several feet now.
The entrance to this damned tomb must be here somewhere. He should leave it until tomorrow. He was exhausted and flat now with anticlimax, all his pleasure in getting the tree off the mound without destroying the barrow dissipated by the sight of Em bent over Bidenden like a ministering angel.
“Deo?” Em touched his sweaty, bare forearm. The touch of her fingertips sent a shiver over his skin and an ache to his chest. “Haven’t you done enough for today?”
He swallowed, shoving his spade in the dirt viciously. “I want to find this bloody entrance,” he said through clenched teeth. “It must be here somewhere.”
“Deo, what’s wrong?” She shifted into his line of sight.
“Nothing. I’m just—tired.”
“All the more reason to stop,” she said with perfect logic.
He closed his eyes and leaned on the shovel. “Go back to the house, Emily, and look after Bidenden!” He straightened and shoveled more dirt.
“Oh.”
He scraped some more dirt and shoveled again, expecting her to move away. She didn’t. The silence stretched as he scraped and shoveled some more.
“Deo,” her voice was soft, and he couldn’t resist looking at her. There were tears in her eyes, but she was smiling wryly. “You’re jealous?”
He huffed, getting ready to deny it, but what came out of his mouth was the opposite. “Yes, damn it!” He shoved the spade in the dirt and straightened, turning toward her, his hands clenching and unclenching in agitation. “Em—”
She flung herself at him, making him stagger on the uneven ground, her arms going round his middle and her face buried in his damp shirt. “Oh Deo! It was you I was worried sick about all afternoon. Didn’t I say so?”
“Yes,” he admitted reluctantly, his arms going round her, but he was hesitant to touch her gown with his grubby hands. Her broad brimmed hat was stuck in his face, so he ripped it off her head and kissed her hair. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I’m an idiot.”
She lifted her head, and he kissed her. The rush of bliss from her mouth on his made him forget momentarily where they were.
Then, Smiggens’s voice instructing his boys to pile some of the cut branches into neat bundles, reminded him of the impropriety of kissing his wife in front of the servants, and he let her go reluctantly.
Energized by her kiss, his earlier elation came flooding back, and he said, “I’m sure the entrance is here somewhere—it must be. I want to find it, don’t you?”
“Of course, but you must be exhausted.”
He shook his head. “I’m fine, we have at least another two hours of good light.”
She bent to pick up her hat that he had tossed away. “All right, but let me help you,” she said, shoving it back on her head. “I can rake the dirt away,” she nodded to the pile of garden implements supplied by Smiggens, “as you dig it out. Won’t that be quicker?”
“Yes,” he admitted with a grin. God, she is wonderful!
He dug steadily for half an hour, until the muscles in his back and shoulders were screaming.
After the work he’d already done that day, he was pushing even his strength.
He would have to stop soon. He shoved the spade in the dirt one more time, and it jarred on something hard.
He stuck it again and got the same thing.
He shoveled the dirt away, working at revealing whatever his spade had hit.
“Em, I think I’ve got something.” She stopped raking and came to stand beside him as he worked to reveal the top of a flat stone.
Ten more minutes revealed the edge of the large flat stone and a bit more digging under it revealed another stone set beneath the top one. This one was inset, he soon discovered, in dry stone walls of smaller flat stones on either side. It was a lintel over an entranceway, he was sure of it.
With about a third of it uncovered, he stopped, sweating and panting, his muscles trembling with fatigue.
“We found it,” he said with a grin. “And I’m done in. Enough for today.”
She wrapped her arms round him. “You’re magnificent!” she said, looking up at him with such unmistakable warmth and pride in her eyes, his chest felt full and tight. No one had ever looked at him like that before.
He wrapped an arm round her and kissed her. “I couldn’t have done this without you.”
“And all the men who helped with the tree,” she pointed out.
“Yes, and them. I will have to thank them properly later. Come on, I need a bath so badly!”
She grinned, and they gathered up their personal belongings and headed back to the house. Smiggens and his lads had left them some time ago.