Read Online The Funeral Boat by Kate Ellis - Free Book Online Page B

the name Laurence Proudy before?
     
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Chapter Four
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    AD
    A traveller came to the Minster this day seeking shelter on the
    way to Exeter. He said that the Danes had sailed around the
    coast, attacking many dwellings and churches. They had come
    ashore at Stoke Beeching and had burned the church there to
    the ground. Some men of the village had defied them and had
    fought bravely but to no avail. All that the people possessed
    was plundered and many were taken as slaves. Then Mass
    was said and prayers offered for those dead and enslaved by
    these enemies of God.
    [Note in margin of the text] 1 pray that my father and
    mother came safe through the outrage at Stoke Beeching. Oh
    Lord hear this my prayer.
    From the chronicle of Brother Edwin, monk of Neston Minster
    Neil Watson felt pleased with himself. He had found Saxon foundations underneath Neston parish church - he was certain of it. And they had not been simply demolished to make way for a bigger and more up-to-the-minute structure in Norman times: they had been destroyed by fire. Neston’s Saxon minster had met a violent and fiery end only to rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes at a later, more peaceful, date. They had found other things too. Late Saxon pottery and a number of styli, Anglo-Saxon writing implements, all of which fitted in with Neil’s minster theory - a house of learned monks in the heart of the walled town, ministering to the people of the area.
    Neil sat back on his heels and looked at his handiwork. It was coming on nicely - which was more than could be said for the
     
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    playing of the amateur organist, who was still murdering Mendelssohn up at the church’s east end.
    ‘Coming to the pub for lunch, Neil?’ asked a well-bred female voice from the next trench.
    ‘Er … no thanks, Jane. I think I’ll pop along to Longhouse Cottage.’ .
    ‘I thought you’d finished there. Any word from the museum about those rivets?’
    ‘They say they’re early … won’t give an exact date, though.’ He paused for a minute, thinking. ‘I wanted to speak to the people at Longhouse Cottage … see if they know anything about the history of the place. It’s probably a long shot but … ‘
    ‘Well, you know where we are if you change your mind,’ said Matt, wiping his hands on his black T-shirt. He and Jane walked out of the cool, dark church in amicable silence. Those two, Neil thought, are becoming more like an old married couple every day. Resolutely single, he watched them leave without envy.
    The heat came as a shock to Neil when he stepped outside the church. He had spent the morning shaded from the warmth - the happy result of a ridge of high pressure hovering over the south-west of England - and, like most of his fellow countrymen, had been totally unprepared for an outside temperature which was greater than that indoors. He walked down Neston High Street past men with pallid legs displayed beneath ill-fitting shorts and women in diaphanous dresses, resolutely staying out of doors to make the most of the rare heat wave. When he reached his car, he found it hot enough inside to bake bread in. He wound the windows down and drove the ten miles out to Stoke Beeching, where a pleasant breeze blew in off the sea, making the temperature more bearable.
    Maggie Palister must have spotted him as he drove up the bumpy track to Longhouse Cottage. She waited for him outside the front door, arms folded. Her expression was hardly welcoming.
    ‘I thought you’d finished. What do you want?’
    ‘Is Carl about?’ Carl, at least, had been interested in their discovenes.
    ‘He’s seeing to the hens. He’s busy. And he’s filled in that hole. He had to lay the drainage and he thought you’d finished,’ she said accusingly.
     
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    Neil sensed that she regarded him as a nuisance, interfering with the running of their precarious livelihood. He’d have to tread carefully.
    ‘That’s okay. I just wanted to ask you if you knew atJ.ything