Philip Gooden - The Salisbury Manuscript

The man turned aside from the farm-track as the autumn afternoon closed in and storm clouds were scudding from the west. He was glad the light was fading. Even though hed been careful to dress in his roughest clothes so that he might be taken for an itinerant labourer, he preferred to be moving in the gloom. Nevertheless it was going to be dark sooner than he expected. He would have to move briskly.

The man had a bag slung over his shoulder and, despite weighing little, it felt awkward on his back. He set off to his right on a path which was scarcely more than a flattened line of grass on the uphill slope. When he reached a copse of beech trees, he paused to adjust the bag so it sat more comfortably. Pulling his cap down and shrugging himself more deeply inside his coat, he left the shelter of the beeches and set off at a smart pace.

Ahead of him was the bare ridge of the slope with forlorn clumps of sheep were grazing on either side. Because he was keeping his head low, the man wasnt aware of the presence of another individual making his way in the opposite direction until he saw a pair of leather leggings and great boots almost under his nose.

He nipped off the makeshift path as the shepherd the other man striding downhill was carrying a sheep-crook nodded and mumbled something inaudible. The man with the bag nodded in reply. He didnt speak. He couldnt see the shepherds expression, on account of the fading light and the speed at which they passed, but he had the impression of a certain irritation, as if this hillside belonged to the shepherd. When he halted and looked back he observed that the shepherd too had stopped and was gazing uphill at him. Near the bottom of the slope the man saw what he hadnt noticed before, the roof of a simple house, more of a hut. Meanwhile the shepherd clutched his free hand to his felt hat and, using the sheep-crook as a pivot, turned away and made towards the hut.

The man wondered why he hadnt spotted the place before. Probably because it was in a small hollow and surrounded by bushes only now losing their leaves. He should have surveyed the surroundings more carefully. Not that it made any difference to his plan. His destination was well out of sight of the shepherds hut, up and over the ridge of the hill. The shepherd did not matter. The man did not intend to return to the area after this visit. He resumed the path which now crossed an extensive ditch-like depression before climbing to the top of the ridge.

At the top he paused for a final time to catch his breath and look round. The landscape stretched away to the south and west, broken by mounds and low hills and with the glint of water. No living thing was visible, apart from the sheep waiting out the rain which had begun to fall. He could still see the corner of the roof of the hut. He wondered if he was being watched even now. Telling himself that if he was genuinely what he appeared to be a travelling workman with his tools in a bag slung over his shoulder then the last thing he would be doing was stopping to take in the view, the man set his back to the wind and rain and walked down the lesser slope on the far side of the ridge.

He was entering on an oblong-shaped plateau, whose sides were high enough to obscure the view of the outside world. The wind slackened and it grew quieter. The hill was a natural feature of the landscape but there was a queer sort of design to the top of it. It even had a name: Todds Mound, though no one knew who Todd was or why his name should have been associated with the place. The man had discovered from all his reading and researches that it had first been adapted to human use many centuries ago, long before it had become Todds Mound. He knew that ancient people had chosen the hilltop as a secure site from which to overlook the surrounding country. They had strengthened the grassy ramparts and excavated a kind of ditch which ran almost the whole way round the base of the hill, before laying paths and constructing simple places to live and work.

At some point these people had abandoned the hilltop. Perhaps they were overrun by their enemies, perhaps it was difficult to obtain water from such chalky soil or the lowlands below became a more attractive prospect. Whatever the reason, they were long gone and forgotten. But until that point they had lived here in large numbers, and died here too. That was what interested the man. Those who had died on this fortified summit.

He walked the length of the plateau, several hundred yards. There were no trees, only shrubs and brambles. At points around the grassy rim there were small dips, even clefts, and the man was making for one of these on the south-eastern corner. Once he stopped and looked behind him, convinced that he was being followed. He was startled to see a deer shoot across an exposed area between clumps of undergrowth, a flash of brown and the white tuft of the tail showing up in the gloom. Rebuking himself for nerves, he resumed his course.

When he reached the cleft at the far edge he saw the town in the distance and the cathedral spire against the smoky clouds. He didnt spend time on the view, which was familiar to him. The man paused to readjust his bag once more, knowing that the going would become tricky from now on because of the fall of the land on this aspect of the hill. This was why he had approached the spot via the hilltop rather than making the scramble up from the eastern side. He swung through the cleft, which was like a natural gateway into the plateau, and moved slantwise down the slope, bracing himself with his right leg and keeping his arms out for balance.

He reckoned that at some time thered been a slippage of land at this south-eastern edge. There were areas where the grass was thin and the chalk showed through. In addition, the cleft or gateway through which hed just passed had the appearance of having once been an entrance a kind of back entrance perhaps to the hilltop settlement, a function it could hardly have provided given the current lie of the land. There were trees on the slope too, a few beeches but mostly clusters of yew. The man was heading for a spot just above one of these clusters, perhaps a hundred feet or so below the top of the hill and about the same number of yards to the left of the notch in the plateau.

The point was marked by an uprooted beech tree, an old and diseased one brought down by a storm sometime in the spring of that year. The man was lucky on several counts. Lucky that this side of the hill was not used for grazing and was too steep for any other purpose, including a comfortable walk. Lucky that his researches had brought him to this general area of Todds Mound. Lucky that what he was searching for had until the springtime been concealed by the beech tree. Not intentionally concealed, for the tree was of a much later date. But the great trunk and the arm-like roots clinging to the hillside had effectively hidden the few yards of ground around its base from the casual glance of a passer-by strolling either at the bottom or at the top of Todds Mound.

This was his third expedition to the spot. The first had been discovery. The second had been for investigation and preparation. And now came the third: the fruit of his labours.

The man with the bag on his shoulder reached the fallen beech tree. Jagged shards protruded from what remained of a base which had been half torn from the soil by the violence of the fall. The great mass of the trunk and the crown with its out-flung branches, lay slantwise across the slope and provided good cover. Not that much cover was required in the growing gloom. To his left, that is on the uphill side of the tree, the man sensed rather than saw what he was looking for, a pile of mud and chalk thrown up when the tree fell. Near the centre of the mound was a darker place like the entrance to a tunnel. He experienced a tightening in his chest.