Chapter 10
When the lunch hour came, and all the local workers rose up from the pit to perform their prayers and eat their meal, Saffron took advantage of the temporarily empty site to take a more leisurely look at the ruins.
She was not alone in this idea, for several of the archaeology contingent joined her.
Not to mention Martin Neill was still trailing her like a lost puppy.
It was perhaps not accurate to call it a pit, as all the crew did, she thought as she stepped carefully over discarded picks and brushes.
It was more like a very rough bowl comprised of twenty-foot walls which showed the striations of its history.
Dirt revealing the white roots of the faded grass sat atop a layer of irregular rocks, which preceded stones placed by human hands.
Those stones formed walls, which were interrupted every five feet or so by pillars jutting out from the uniform surface.
It was from these pillars that the first three arches grew, the ones rebuilt by the locals to demonstrate what the stoa would have looked like.
Mr. Apak said this stoa extended all the way to the far side of the field, connecting to the basilica.
Saffron could see it in her mind: dozens of these arches creating a passageway, the glaring sun striping the ground with their shadows.
The trench—but that word wouldn’t do either—extended some forty yards to the north, and several areas branched off of it.
The first market stall, where her wares had been discovered, was found just next to the rough stairs constructed to allow entry into the pit.
Halfway down the length of the pit, they’d uncovered something the archaeologists decided was a stair, suggesting the location of one of the cisterns Clark and Apak had mentioned.
From the talk about her, that was of some interest. But she moved on from it, as she didn’t particularly want to spend her lunch hour peering down at a single rectangular piece of stone in the midst of hard-packed dirt.
She left the cluster of archaeologists—which luckily did not include Clark—and wandered to the far end of the pit, where the most work was happening to dig out the second market stall.
Martin dawdled near the archaeologists’ mysterious step, and when she glanced at him, he looked away quickly as if embarrassed.
He’d done that most of the morning, looking anxious to be helpful yet equally anxious whenever she spoke to him.
Sighing, she idly examined the tools laid down randomly in the dirt and the section of wall they’d been digging into. At the bottom, a stone was lodged in the compacted earth, surely one of the stones that made up a fallen arch, given the perfection of its angled edge.
After a while, she gave up on trying to make out anything from the dirt. The others must have decided it was time to down a quick meal before work resumed, for the pit was now silent and empty save for her and Martin. They ought to go eat, too.
“Don’t touch the wall,” she murmured when Martin pressed himself up against the wall to let her pass.
“Oh!” He leaped away into the wall nearly into her and caused her to knock against a toolbox, which clanged loudly as a pick fell from where it rested on the edge into the metal basin.
Grimacing, she planted a hand on the wall to keep from falling.
“Don’t touch that,” snapped a voice.
Martin’s rounded eyes met hers. “Oh no, I am sorry—”
“It’s fine,” Saffron muttered, straightening up to see Clark watching her from the entrance to the first stall. “I wasn’t touching the wall intentionally, Mr. Clark.”
“Intentionally or not,” he said loudly, “you might destroy something important, just as I feared.” He stepped away from the stall toward the steps.
“I hesitate to tell you, since you plainly don’t know how to handle yourself at an archaeological site, but I’ve found something that you might find interesting in one of the little nooks carved into the walls inside there. ”
Despite herself, Saffron perked up. “What is it? Will you show me?”
“Oh no, not now. I’ve worked up quite an appetite,” he drawled, already walking up the steps. “Some of us have actually done work today, you know.”
She ground her teeth together to prevent herself from retorting.
She had done work this morning. She’d made preliminary sketches of the stall, the pit, and the vessels they were to open that afternoon, which he would have known, had he not wandered off an hour after they’d settled into work.
She’d seen him hanging around in the shade of a tent when she’d been standing in the sun to make her sketches.
Clark had disappeared. She looked longingly into the stall. Though the mostly underground state made her skin crawl, she was eager to see what it was Clark had found.
A loud grumble interrupted her thoughts. She turned to Martin, who looked like he wished he could sink right down into the dirt.
“I-I beg your pardon,” he stammered, pressing a hand to his stomach.
“It’s all right,” she said quickly, “I’m hungry, too. Let’s go to the tent to eat.”
“But …” He looked at the stall guiltily. “Shouldn’t we see what Mr. Clark found?”
Would it be better or worse to look at it now?
If she did, Clark would likely say she’d damaged whatever it was.
This might be a ploy to get her to inadvertently break some artifact.
But what good would that do Clark? He’d benefit far more from intact pieces, not broken ones, even if it would damage her reputation.
On the other hand, Clark would probably proclaim her a coward, or say by not looking at whatever he’d found without him meant she didn’t believe in her own abilities.
She didn’t know what would be worse. But between herself and Martin, she was sure she could manage not to ruin it.
She grinned at Martin. “Let’s take a quick look. Light that lamp?”
Martin snatched up the lamp sitting on the last stair, fumbled for matches from his pocket, and lit it.
She allowed him to go into the stall first, and certainly not because stepping into the dim space gave her the shivers.
She refused to be frightened. They were not even properly underground, she told herself.
Within sat several large carved stones, set aside and numbered with chalk, likely for later reconstruction. The walls were packed dirt, the ceiling reinforced with wood beams. This room had been the first they’d uncovered, and so many feet had passed through, the floor was quite even.
It was that reason that, as Saffron looked around at the walls, she realized Clark couldn’t have actually discovered anything new within. Dozens of people had already examined this room.
“We might as well go up to the tent,” she said sullenly.
“Oh, but look,” Martin said, pointing to the wall.
There were a number of nooks, almost like shelves of stone built into the walls. Some were smooth, while others had looser stones. Martin was pointing to one that looked especially loose.
Saffron stepped forward and tugged on it. It gave, sliding out. Excitedly, she grinned at Martin. “Do you think this is it?”
“I don’t know,” he said, peering at the stone. “It looks ordinary, doesn’t it?”
“Lift the lamp,” Saffron said. “Maybe Clark meant it was behind the stone?”
Martin did, and she leaned closer to the hole the stone had left behind.
Something gleamed gold in the lamp’s light. Saffron’s breath caught. Carefully, she put her hand into the hole to take the treasure out. Her fingers touched something cool and textured.
She jerked her hand away with a strangled yelp.
It was not a treasure. It was a snake. And it was not pleased to be disturbed.
“Mr. Ashton!”
Alexander looked around for the source of his name and saw only the crew digging into the simple but delicious fare Mr. Assam had promised the crew for lunch.
The rice, fish, and roasted vegetables could not have been more welcome after the morning on-site, though he heard a number of grumbles about eating sitting on rugs spread over the ground.
A ripple of interest went through the assembly as Martin Neill came dashing into the shade of the mess tent, looking a little wild.
“Neill?” Alexander hailed him, and the boy scrambled over to him, nearly tripping over Kent to get to him.
“Mr. Ashton, where is Mr. Dunmore?” Martin asked, dark eyes shifting over the crew. “I need him to come down to the first stall right away.”
Alexander swallowed a sigh. “You don’t have to report every reptile you spot to him.”
“It’s not that—it’s a viper!”
That got the attention of the dozen or so crew members sitting on the ground around them.
“What? A viper?”
“Where?”
“Someone grab a shovel—”
Annoyed the assistant had stirred up a building uproar, Alexander put a hand on Neill’s shoulder and pushed him from the tent. “What’s going on?”
“It’s a viper, sir,” he panted. Sweat trickled from his brow. “It’s down in the stall. Miss Everleigh sent me for Mr. Dunmore—”
“What?” Alexander snapped.
Neill flinched at his harsh tone. His voice dwindled as he spoke. “S-she sent me for Mr. Dunmore, because he’d know how to catch it …”
Struggling for patience, he asked, “And where is Miss Everleigh?”
“In the stall,” Neill whispered.
“Find Dunmore.” And then he was jogging to the pit and down the steps.
He found her in the stall, lit by a lamp she held up and away from her body at an odd angle.
Her look of expectation fell to dismay when he entered. “Martin couldn’t find Dunmore?”
“He said there’s a viper down here,” Alexander said, coming to a stop as he remembered if there was a viper, he ought to pay attention to where he was walking.
“Well, yes,” she said, “that’s why we need Dunmore. Anyone else would likely just kill the snake. But Dunmore should see to it, to make sure no one gets hurt. Including the snake.”
“If there is a viper,” he ground out, “why are you still in this room?”