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Those Old Gods

by Mihangel Hwntw

 

Man's feet are clay and they halt and stay with the graveyard worms and clods,
But his plumed thought flings to the wind its wings in the haunt of the careless gods -
For those old gods live, and they weave and give new meanings to old myth;
And blossoms and gleams of the world-old dreams flower fresh from the truth at their pith.
So the tales that twine round the ruined shrine where Maponus' priests have sung,
They were true, they are true, they are born anew in the speech of a younger tongue.

Don Marquis, Wireless Telegraph
(the original has Hermes, not Maponus)

 

Chapter 1. Mark: the vast shipwreck

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost,
I am the self-consumer of my woes -
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love's frenzied, stifled throes.
And yet I am, and live - like vapours tossed
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems.

John Clare, I Am

Was there no justice in the world? Some people had only to hold out their hand for fruit to fall into it. Yet, search as he might, no fruit at all had ever come Mark Bushby's way. It wasn't as if he didn't try. But they seemed to get what they were after without any effort at all. He wasn't exactly embittered, or at least he persuaded himself that he wasn't. He did know there had to be winners and losers. He simply ached with a persistent loneliness, with the frustration of the perpetual loser.

At the door of the Chew Magna youth club he lingered, one foot on the step, pondering these questions for the umpteenth time. As always the answers, if there were any, eluded him. Chattering youngsters jostled past him into the cacophony inside, but he was in no hurry to join them. Tonight's DJ must be an enthusiast - one more decibel, surely, and the neighbours would complain, three more and the roof would lift off.

He sighed. He didn't much like the dancing, he didn't much like the music, he certainly didn't like the volume. It wasn't for any of those that he came here. What he was desperately yearning for was someone with whom to share trust, understanding, care, fulfilment, fun - everything he didn't have. It was a tall order, he knew. Far too tall. After two years of searching, he'd settle readily for someone who'd merely satisfy his physical needs. But he hadn't found even that lesser someone.

He wasn't dumb, he reckoned. He read a lot. He thought a lot. There was plenty of time for both, for he had virtually no social life these days. He even wrote. Gloomy stuff, mostly, but he knew he had a creative imagination. Too creative, maybe. Maybe that was where the trouble lay, that his fantasies were too vivid, too urgent. It hadn't done him any good at school, either. Even the teachers seemed to sideline him these days, and his grades had slumped from the high to the mediocre.

And he knew his looks weren't against him. To his embarrassment, all the girls thought he was cute. Several of them he could have bedded by now, if he'd wanted. But he didn't. He yearned for a boy, preferably a year or two younger than himself. He couldn't say why. He just did. You're warped and perverted, he told himself, you're a cradle-snatcher. But that didn't quench the yearning.

And even if you find a likely candidate, how the hell do you break the oh-so-dangerous ice? You need to trust, and be trusted. It wasn't easy for a fifteen-year-old, quiet, shy and a loner, to broach the subject. So far it had proved downright impossible. But constant disappointment didn't quench the yearning either.

He'd searched at school, of course. There were a few openly gay boys there, but too old for his needs. And too unappealing. Think of that zit-spattered nerd Derek. And Ross the hunky rugger bugger. No younger ones, as far as he knew. None, even, whom he could risk chatting up on the off-chance they might be interested. 'Excuse me, I rather like the look of you. Are you gay?' Well, maybe not quite as blatant as that. But however you put it, if the answer was no, you'd die. How for God's sake are you supposed to know if someone's in the running? Everything's stacked against you.

If only ...

If only people wore labels - 'gay and available' - how much easier life would be.

If only you lived in a bigger town than Chew, one that offered more opportunities.

If only you had the sociability, the confidence, you might have been set up long ago.

If only you had someone to talk it over with. Not Dad, no way. After all, he's the rector, and he hasn't got time for you, and you know what he thinks about gays.

If only Mum hadn't died. Where Dad's become unsympathetic and remote, she'd been warm and close. He remembered her with a catch in his throat. She'd have understood.

If only you had friends. Not your casual school friends (or do you mean acquaintances?) but real friends, who accepted you for what you were. Precisely one other person in the whole world knows your secret, and what does he do? He laughs at you for it.

If only, if only ...

Anyway, the whole set-up at school was wrong for a quest like his. The barriers between years, and ages, and cliques, were too hard to break through. He needed somewhere more open, less ... less stratified. But the public toilets were populated by dirty old men, not by dirty young boys. He'd tried the scouts, but the troop was too small and unchanging. He'd lurked in the shopping centre, checking out mouth-watering youngsters aplenty, but how the hell did you open negotiations with them?

At the youth club, at least the atmosphere was relaxed. The trouble was that all the boys there were after girls, and the girls were after boys ... including him. He'd been haunting it for a while now, with no success so far and little hope for the future. But it remained the best bet. The least bad bet. Mark sighed again, and summoned up the energy to force his way in against the torrent of sound.

As he did so, he became aware of someone behind him, and turned. What confronted him, an arm's length away, made him catch his breath. An apparition from his randiest dreams. A slim figure - despite the baggy sweater, the tight jeans showed it was slim - of middling height. Longish straight blond hair. A smooth oval face, haloed with the dull red disc of the setting sun. A slightly upturned nose, a spattering of freckles, and a wide and mischievous mouth. Eyes, glinting in the light reflected from the glass doors, of a brilliant blue. Cheeks, silhouetted against the sun, showing the faintest dusting of faintest down.

And the apparition grinned at him, and spoke. "Should have brought my earmuffs!"

Hardly profound, but genuine music to Mark's ears. It was said so softly, without trying to compete with the din, that the mere difference in pitch made it audible. And it was said in a sexily husky young voice, like a voice that hasn't quite decided whether it's time to break for good. God in heaven, he can't be more than thirteen at the most. On the threshold of adolescence. Way up to specification in every department, or at least in every department that's visible. But he'd been goggling in silence, and too long. With a huge effort he pulled himself together and found his voice.

"Hi! I'm Mark. Haven't seen you around before, have I? We don't often get new boys here."

The effort brought him out in a sweat. But it wasn't a bad effort, he felt, and his confidence rose. In return, he got a long look of appraisal and interest.

"No, I've never been here before. I'm Chris. Just a visitor. Staying with my cousin. Roy Beckham. Dunno if he's here yet. D'you know him?"

Mark did, only too well. A year or so back, before their ways parted, Roy had been his best friend, and Mark had incautiously confessed to him that he was gay. A mistake, that, a serious mistake. Roy had let him down badly. He was one for the girls, one of those types who didn't have to try, and had reacted with openly sarcastic amusement. They were friends no longer.

"Yep. I do. He arrived a few minutes ago - let's go in and look for him."

Hoping that hospitality might anchor Chris to his side, Mark insisted on paying both their entry fees and bought a Pepsi apiece. Roy, in the company of a gaggle of girls, was gesticulating from the other side of the hall, and they wove a zigzag course towards him between the dancers.

"Hi Chris!" yelled Roy when they were in shouting range. "Find your way all right? Look, you've met Zoe and Claire before, haven't you? But this is Dawn and this is Ruth." He totally ignored Mark, but the girls waved a welcome.

Chris said hullo and sat down to chat with the girls. To hear each other through the noise, they put their heads together and abandoned Roy, who turned to Mark for want of anyone more interesting.

"Met Chris on the way in, then, did you?"

"Yep. He tells me he's your cousin." And, without stopping to think, he blurted out, "God, he's cute, isn't he? Bet he's hot, too."

An idiotic thing to say, totally idiotic, especially to Roy, and he blushed scarlet. But instead of some wounding reply, Roy gave him a long considering look.

"Y-e-e-e-s," he said slowly. "Come to think of it, just your cup of tea. I'd forgotten about that. Yes, you're right - cute and hot. Er, like me to put in a word for you?"

"Jesus, Roy." He was gobsmacked. "Would you? You're a star."

"OK then." Roy smiled benignly. "Look, you push off for a bit, so I can talk to Chris. Don't want you breathing down my neck."

Mind whirling, Mark obeyed. Butting in on the girls' conversation, he asked Zoe to dance. He had nothing against girls, as such. Some of them he rather liked. What he didn't like was the thought of what you did with them. It was just that their anatomy was, well, incomplete. Genitally challenged - good description, that, he must remember it. Not their fault, poor things. But those wobbly boobs, and the part that mattered most, were no substitute whatever for a boy's equipment. That, to him, was infinitely more alluring. If only girls had that, he thought with devious logic, then he needn't be gay.

Zoe here, for example, was very attractive. He fully admitted that. And she seemed to find him attractive too. She'd even shown him once how to kiss, properly. Disconcerting, that had been, but highly educational. Yet, set alongside her, Chris won hands down. He was not only seriously beautiful but had everything that Zoe didn't. That was the difference. And whenever he looked back from the dance floor, he saw Chris and Roy deep in conversation and occasionally glancing across at him. Good old Roy. He'd misjudged him badly.

When the music stopped, Roy beckoned him.

"Since you're up, Mark, would you show Chris where the loos are?"

And the boy gave him an inviting smile. Dear God, thought Mark as he guided him down the corridor to the Gents, it's working. You've never had a chance like this before. Perfect opportunity for each to see what the other has to offer. And if you play your cards right, then ... His heart might be thumping, but he felt unexpectedly in control as he made for the middle urinal of the three, so that Chris would have to use an adjoining one.

But the lad confounded him by slipping demurely into a cubicle and bolting the door. Oh, bugger it, thought Mark as he unzipped and peed. Is he just shy? But no, it wasn't that. He heard plops in the pan, followed by the whisper of paper. Oh well, if a man's gotta go ... But then there was silence. A long silence.

"What's holding you up?" he called when he could bear it no longer. "You having ...?"

Christ, no! You almost asked if he was having a quiet wank. Can't do that. Far too familiar, far too crude, far too early. You only met him a quarter of an hour ago. Don't go over the top.

The cubicle door opened immediately.

"Sorry," said Chris, heading for the wash-basin. "Didn't realise you were waiting. I was looking at the drawings and reading the graffiti. All about, um, you know, gay sex. Wheeee, haven't seen any as hot as that before!"

Mark knew. He had seen them too. Indeed in his desperation he had written one of them himself. And as the boy turned round to dry his hands, Mark couldn't fail to notice that his long sweater was half-caught in his belt, revealing an unmistakable near-vertical bulge in the jeans beneath. Trying not to stare too obviously, Mark swallowed hard. At last, his moment of truth had arrived. No mistaking it. Must get this right.

"Er, that sort of thing turn you on?"

"Well, I've never, um, done anything like that." The blue eyes looked up bashfully under their long lashes. "But I've often thought about doing it. Not with ... just anybody who only wanted a quick, you know, blow-job or whatever. But with someone who's, um, good-looking. And the sort of person I could, er ... be friends with too." The invitation in those eyes was hardly to be missed.

"Oh God. Same goes for me. Exactly the same. I've not done it either. But I'm desperate to try. I want a friend too. You're cute, you know."

Mark realised he was babbling, pulled himself together and forced a smile which he hoped wasn't inane or leering. Things were getting positively uncomfortable inside his briefs and he rearranged them, rather more ostentatiously than he'd intended.

"So ... er ... shall we ... would you like to ... ?"

Before he could work out an ending to this crucial question, he was answered with a dirtily conspiratorial grin.

"Wicked! I was hoping you'd say that. Yes! Let's! Look, let's dig Roy out, then, and go back to my auntie's. The coast's clear there."

He adjusted his own crotch and put his sweater to rights, and his grin grew wider still. He was already moving tentatively towards Mark as if for a warm-up round, when the door swung open and another boy came in. Self-conscious and thwarted, they hurriedly left. Chris scampered ahead to the hall where he had a quiet word with Roy, who nodded and brusquely detached himself from his harem. The three of them exchanged the shindig of the club for the blessed quiet of the evening.

As they walked, Mark was conscious of Chris's eyes on him and, lost in wonder, he returned the gaze. Daringly, he fumbled for the boy's hand and squeezed it, and found his own being squeezed back. His dream was coming true. Basking in a heaven of anticipation, he said not a word. Nor did Chris.

"Mum and Dad are away for the night," Roy explained, doing the talking for them. "Good thing too. Chris is in the spare room, by the way. It's a double bed. Use that. Don't mind me. Just enjoy yourselves. I'm beginning to envy you, Mark. I'm sorry I ... laughed when you first told me." No argument, he was a real friend after all.

A few minutes brought them to the house. Though his heart might be a-flutter, Mark felt his hormones and adrenalin surging. He knew, more or less, what to do. So he should - he had rehearsed it often enough in his fantasies. He must keep the momentum going. The instant the front door closed he drew the slender body to his own, looked down at the expectant face and, drawing on his one and only lesson, pulled Chris's head towards him until their lips met. The boy, to his astonishment, grabbed the initiative, and all the action took place inside Mark's mouth. No complaint about that, for Chris kindled fires far hotter than Zoe had ever done. Yet it left Mark a trifle uneasy - surely he should have taken charge.

"That was awesome! But, hey, you've done that before!" he protested, panting happily as they came up for air.

Chris was radiant too. "Yes, I have. But never with a gay ... man." He might have said 'boy,' but the 'man' restored Mark's self-confidence. Then, modestly and hesitantly, "Mark, look, I'm, er, new to the rest of it. I'm feeling ... a bit shy about this. D'you mind if I undress by myself? Please?"

Understandable for his first time. Mark felt much the same, but did not want to seem the novice.

"Course. No problem."

"And you undress by yourself? Can he use your room, Roy?"

"Sure. Help yourself." Roy had been watching the performance with a kindly eye.

"I'll call when I'm ready, right?" Chris murmured once they were upstairs, and slipped into the spare room.

Roy led Mark to his own bedroom and tactfully vanished. Mark slowly stripped, went to the mirror to check and double-check his face for zits, and stood back for a full-length view. Not a bad sight, he admitted. If he was still nervous, it was over-ridden by an odd mixture of lust, humble gratitude, and hope. At last, at long last, he'd made the grade. Fulfilment was just round the corner. And on hearing a faint "I'm ready" he marched without hesitation into the spare room, his manhood proudly saluting the ceiling.

Chris was lying on one side of the bed, half under the sheet, on his back, naked and provocative. His arms were folded across his chest, and the sheet was pulled down precisely far enough to expose a bush of fair hair, but to conceal what came next. His eyes, as they took in Mark's body, seemed wide and scared. Understandable again, thought Mark. Probably why he hasn't got a stiffy yet. Never mind, that'll soon look after itself. Athrob, he knelt beside the bed and smiled down.

"Said it before, you're cute! Let's take this slowly, shall we? Kiss again for starters?"

He lowered his face to the boy's, this time making sure that both tongues were in Chris's mouth. As they wrestled wetly there, he placed his hand on the lad's flat stomach and gently stroked it. Then he inched downwards, through the thicket of hair - as luxuriant as his own, astonishingly plentiful for a boy so young - until he reached his target, that magic place still hidden beneath the sheet.

But ... but ... there was nothing there. Well, there was something. But only a warm damp slot, flanked by hairy ridges.

The shock of understanding hit him like a sledgehammer. Reflexes clamped his jaws together and he bit his tongue viciously. Chittering with pain he leapt up, his erection deflating as fast as a balloon with a terminal leak. Numbly he watched her mouth, lipsticked like a vampire's with his blood, widen in a fit of uncontrolled giggles. Numbly he watched her unfold her arms off her small firm breasts. Numbly he noted a rolled-up handkerchief beside her, and numbly realised it had recently done duty as a bulge in her jeans. He understood, but did not yet react. All his emotions were on hold.

The door flew open, and in pranced Roy, grinning like an ape, rampant, stark naked except for a condom. He leapt on to the bed beside Chris and clung to her, quaking with laughter. The dam of Mark's emotions burst. There was no justice in the world. He'd been fooled, he'd been betrayed. This bastard and this bitch would broadcast the joke to everyone in town, and he'd be dead. He sank to his knees again, buried his head in the mattress, and howled his grief.

"Oh, shut up, you pathetic poof," growled Roy. "Get out and blub somewhere else. We've got things to do, Christine and me."

He tried to pull her head towards his, but she was looking away now, resisting, giggling no longer, frowning.

"Leave it, Roy." Her voice was strained. "We're being cruel. Oh God, what have we done?" She laid a hand on Mark's head.

"Christ! He only got what was coming to him. Sissy queer. Don't bother with him. C'mon, I want my fun."

She turned a furious eye on him. "But we've hurt him, Roy. Don't you see? Hurt him. We shouldn't have done that. Oh God, I wish I hadn't. But we've got to help him now. Or I have, even if you won't."

Roy boggled at her. "Help that ... prat?" he spluttered. "You're joking!"

"You fuck off, Roy. Get out! NOW! Or it's all over between us. GET OUT!"

Grumbling peevishly, but recognising real feminine anger when he saw it, Roy went.

"Oh, Mark, I'm sorry. God, I'm sorry." Genuinely stricken, she put her hands on his shoulders. "That was a bloody horrible thing to do, stringing you along. We thought it would be so funny. But it wasn't. I can see that now. Oh, Mark, don't cry. Can I give you a hug? Please?"

She moved her hands under his arms and encouraged him up on to the bed, where he collapsed inertly on his side, still racked with sobs, cheeks wet, a trickle of blood dribbling from his mouth. She snuggled up to him, arms around him, flesh against flesh. He roused her, she found, more than Roy did.

As she lightly stroked his back, his sobs gradually died away. But he still quivered from head to foot, and did not respond. Even down below there was no response at all. She wondered how to right this monstrous wrong. Tonight he'd been on the brink of something he'd been yearning for, who knew for how long, and she'd robbed him of it. The anticlimax must be shattering. On top of that, the shame of being tricked, of making a fool of himself. She was desperate to repair the damage. But when she pulled back her head and offered him her lips, he shook his head dumbly. She ground her pelvis against his; but there was still no response, only another shake of the head.

Then intuition showed her the answer. Femininity, feminine equipment, did nothing for him. He was trembling not only with the mental anguish of humiliation, but with physical anguish at being in close contact with a girl. She couldn't soothe his body. She could only try to soothe his mind.

"I understand now. Don't worry, Mark. I won't tell anyone, and I'll make sure Roy doesn't blab. I can twist his arm. I promise. OK?"

Mark believed her. He had to.

"Look, you nip into the bathroom, and I'll get Roy in here and tell him that if he breathes a word of this, I'll ditch him. While I'm doing that, you get away. And Mark. I'm sorry."

Mark still uttered no word. He threw a final anguished look at her slim genitally challenged body, so unalluring now that the whole of it was visible, and obeyed. He slipped into the bathroom, waited until the coast was clear, and as he mechanically got dressed he heard voices raised in argument. He slunk home, mortified to his innermost being, and wept himself to sleep, to a sleep racked with nightmares.

When, next morning, he forced himself to review the shipwreck of his self-esteem, it looked no better. Things had gone from bad to worse. With luck he wouldn't become a public laughing-stock, but his self-loathing had never been greater. He was in the shit and it was his own fault. How could he have made that first crashing, toe-curling, gut-wrenching, mind-shrivelling blunder? Having made it, how could he have fallen into the trap they'd laid? It was a classic case of wish-fulfilment. Driven desperate by his fantasies, he'd jumped to all kind of conclusions. He'd been ludicrously naïve, idiotically hasty, criminally over-trusting. He hated himself.

He couldn't even say he'd handle things better next time. There wouldn't be a next time, would there? He could never try again. He could never trust anyone again. Anyway, there was nothing to drive him now. All his lusts were smothered, buried deep under the landslide of his shame. He'd never even jerk off again. He'd lost all interest in everything. Was there any point in carrying on? There was a railway nearby, with frequent high-speed trains and a handy bridge ...

Like a zombie Mark struggled through the last three weeks of term, a prey to nightmares, communicating with the outside world less even than before. Like a tortoise under threat, he retreated inside his shell. His friends, such as they were, drifted still further away. Roy sneered surreptitiously. At least he was spared public humiliation. Until, that is, the last day of school, when he knew that Roy had blabbed.

As he arrived in the morning he was confronted by Zoe - Zoe, of all people, whom he'd trusted and respected - posing fatuously with her latest boyfriend.

"Hey, Mark!" she taunted. "Can't you tell the difference?"

At break it grew worse. At lunchtime, when school ended, he fled home with an orchestrated chorus of derision ringing in his ears. Had it not been the end of term he would have kept his appointment with the express train there and then.

As it was, there was one saving grace, just one. He was going away, away from those bastards, away from the chill of home, into the company of people he had never met, who knew nothing of him or his humiliation. For a week, or more if it suited him, he would be in a totally different environment. A haven, with luck, where he could think in peace, and decide whether to stay put in this godforsaken world or to wave it goodbye.

It was Dad, surprisingly enough, who had suggested this break, a couple of weeks ago. Maybe that was a coincidence. They rarely had much to say to each other, and he was not sure if Dad had noticed any change in him. If he had, he had made no comment. But it was no secret that Mark had long been interested in the distant past. He read Current Archaeology and was an avid watcher of Time Team and Meet your Ancestors. The archdeacon, Dad reported, had been telling him about this Roman excavation near Bath which his own son went on as a volunteer. Would Mark like to go too?

Although he had never been on a dig before, he jumped at the chance. All his other interests had guttered and gone out, but this one flickered back to life. Anything to get him away from home, from non-friends, from reminders of his shame. The present and the future were write-offs. His only hope of finding equilibrium lay in communing with the past.

 

Chapter 2. Don: trust all, and be deceived

Better trust all, and be deceived
And weep that trust and that deceiving,
Than doubt one heart that, if believed,
Had blessed one's life with true believing.

Fanny Kemble, Faith

Don Muir loved his Mum and Pop, really. But there were drawbacks in being their son. If someone asked what your father did and you said that he was Archdeacon of Bath, the chances were you'd be met with puzzlement or even laughter. It wasn't as if they lived in Bath anyway, much as he'd like to. It didn't matter where exactly Pop was based, so they lived in the boring overgrown village of Pucklechurch, because Mum taught at the primary school there.

On top of that, and much more crucial, archdeacons weren't with it, nor were their wives. Not in this case, anyway - they had married late, both were well over fifty, and neither of them, now that he'd reached the mature age of fifteen, was on anything like his wavelength. That was putting it mildly. And if they found out his secret, their wavelengths would be more different still.

He admitted that they did their best for him, as they saw it. The tragedy was that they didn't see it better. Like now. They'd spotted in the travel agent's window a cut-price package holiday which coincided with half term, in the remote and exotic wilderness of the Costa del Sol. They hadn't even consulted him before booking, and were miffed at his lukewarm reception. After all, it was a good centre for exploring Visigothic churches and Moorish castles, wasn't it? Yes, he'd have to explore with them. The beach wasn't their scene, and after the recent reports of all those muggings they couldn't leave him on his own at the resort, could they?

It simply had not crossed their minds that he'd much rather go somewhere - anywhere - with a friend of his own age. But he nobly refrained from telling them so. And there were two bright spots. "Oh, and there are a few Roman sites round there too," they'd added as an afterthought - Roman remains were Pop's only enthusiasm which Don did share. And as a regular if critical reader of the Nifty Archive, he was familiar with the weary cliché of meeting the youth of one's dreams on holiday and spending the next week in torrid sex. Hardly likely to happen to him, but you never knew.

So, packed like sardines in a tin, they flew to Málaga and were bussed, through an endless ribbon of hideous holiday homes, to Estepona. Others were dropped off at other hotels, they and they alone were deposited at the Hotel Mediterraneo. Hmmm. His own room with twin beds, his own bathroom, his own telly, his own balcony, and a view of the sea. Could be worse. A family saunter showed an unspoiled town centre of cobbled alleyways, though concrete blocks had sprung up all around.

The hotel food wasn't bad either, and it was plentiful. Over the meal they discussed immediate plans. Next day was Sunday, when archdeacons go to church. So do their families. Pop had done his homework. There was an Anglican chaplaincy ten kilometres along the coast, with a service at half past eleven. That accounted for the morning. And a bit beyond the church was San Pedro de Alcántara and its interesting Roman remains: sensible to do them while they were in that direction. That accounted for the afternoon. Plans for future days could wait.

But ... but ... might those plans be influenced by another factor? As he looked up from his coffee cup, Don noticed a face gazing at him from the far side of the dining room. A boy of much his own age, fair-haired - might even be English - and yes, decidedly attractive. The cliché couldn't actually be coming true, could it? He giggled to himself at the thought, and risked a mischievous wink across the room. By the time they had finished, the boy had gone.

Pop and Mum retired to the lounge with last week's Church Times. Faced with a choice between their scintillating company and his room, he unhesitatingly chose the latter. He flipped through the TV channels and found what seemed to be a soap. Though he couldn't understand a word, the boy was well worth looking at. When that was finished he fantasised with mind and hand about the face in the dining room, and slept like a log.

In the morning his parents collected him and they headed for breakfast. Self-service. They worked their way to the front of the queue, and as Pop left with his tray he called back, "Don! I forgot to take any butter. Would you bring some, please?"

"OK."

"You English, then?" said a voice behind him. It was the boy from last night, looking at him hopefully.

"Yes. Well, Scottish, sort of."

"Thank God for that! Far as I can see, everyone else is French or German. Is it just you and your grandparents?"

Don giggled. "Parents, actually."

"Oops! There's just me and my parents and my dear little sister." They had left the queue and he nodded towards a nearby table with a nondescript couple and a small shrill girl. "All they ever want to do is sit on the beach and make sandcastles and listen to their walkman. I'm not allowed to go off by myself, and I'm going to be bored out of my mind. What are you doing today?"

Don pulled a face. "Boring things too. Church in the morning. Roman ruins this afternoon, though that should be all right. I'm not allowed out on my own either. But if they let us do things together, I reckon I could be free tomorrow, and after that. Meet in the lounge this evening and make some plans? Say six? I'm Don, by the way."

"And I'm Matt. K. See you then. Can't wait!"

They grinned at each other conspiratorially.

"Oh, bugger it," said Don, remembering. He barged through the queue to grab a couple of packs of butter, and when he emerged Matt had joined his family.

"Who was that, Don?" asked Mum.

"Well, he's English, and his name's Matt, but that's all I know. Except that he's bored and wants company. We're going to meet up this evening and make some plans. Will it be OK for me to do things with him, so long as we stay together?"

"Well, that would be nice, dear, but we'd have to meet him first and talk to his parents."

They took a bus out to the church, where a pale young curate was lurking like a spider awaiting flies. He was overwhelmed, when they introduced themselves, at having a real live archdeacon in his church. But only half a dozen others turned up, and the service was pallid. So was the sermon. Which, as usual, gave Don the chance to do some thinking. Not that he had much to go on yet. Matt seemed cool, and was good to look at. Straight blond hair, blue eyes and a wide mouth full of mischief. Yes, he reckoned they could hit it off and have some fun together.

What sort of fun, though? Well, have to wait and see. Don was, on the face of it, a gregarious and extrovert type who saw the best in people. He was also a randy young man who kept a weather eye open for a kindred spirit. He had not met one yet. True, he had randy friends, but their randiness was not in the same direction as his. But it was early days - he had known he was gay for less than a year - and he was optimistic. If he met enough boys, sooner or later he would meet a like-minded one. No denying it, he was out for quick fun.

But he knew very well there was more to it, should be more to it, than that. His make-up was stratified. Below the friendly, the mischievous and erotic, his deepest layer was serious and introspective, and here he was as bright as they came. Despite his outward openness, he was fundamentally lonely inside. The churchily ponderous affection he got at home hardly helped. He felt the need of a richer friendship. Quick fun was one thing. He saw it as a useful - and surely enjoyable - step along the road. But he knew real friendship would be harder to find.

The service over at last, Pop invited the curate to lunch to a nearby marisqueria. The conversation was strictly ecclesiastical shop until they mentioned their plans for the afternoon, at which the curate insisted on driving them to San Pedro and acting as their guide. They inspected the impressive ruins of a Roman bath-house, and of a villa with a wonderfully lifelike mosaic of food and kitchen equipment. Fish and fowl were hanging there, ready for the pot, alongside jars and jugs and bowls and colanders.

"That amphora is depicted so accurately, they say," enthused the curate, "that you can date the mosaic from its shape."

"Looks like Dressel 17 to me," said Pop, who was genned up on these things.

The curate was clearly lost.

"Heinrich Dressel worked out the standard typology for amphorae," Pop explained kindly, "and their dates. Amphorae of his shape number 17 typically contained garum. Late second century."

"Oh yes. Garum was a ghastly sort of fish sauce" - the curate was blissfully unaware that they knew all about it already - "made of fish guts and heads, fermented for months in the sun. Used for flavouring. Or disguising the taste of meat that was a bit off, since they didn't have fridges. If you go to Almuñécar you can see the actual tanks they processed it in."

Don, who was fascinated by the nuts and bolts of Roman life, did prick up his ears at the last bit. That sounded worth a visit. Matt permitting ...

The curate drove them back to the hotel with plenty of time to spare. Don showered, and borrowed Pop's guidebook to look up Almuñécar. Yes, promising. And it gave its Roman name, which made him snigger. And while he was at it, he read up Estepona too, which he had not bothered to before. His eye was caught by one particular facility it offered. At six he made his way to the lounge, to find Matt already there, sprawled in an armchair and thoroughly pissed off.

"Bad day, then?"

"Oh Gawd ... The pool's full of squawking kids, the sea's full of turds, the beach is full of boring and unbeautiful people. Including my family. I've already finished the books I brought. Don't ask any more. What about yours?"

"This morning, boring, as expected. Afternoon, OK. Roman sites."

"You into Roman stuff, then?"

"Big time. And I'm doing Latin at school. It's fascinating, you know. Well, I think so. They were so like us, but fifteen hundred years ahead of their time. Reckon they knew some things we still don't."

"Know what you mean. I live up at Hexham, so I've done most of Hadrian's Wall. It's cool. Ever been there?"

"Yup, a couple of times."

"Know what I like best? The shithouse at Housesteads and its water supply. Half way towards a modern bog. But bloody hell! It was communal - imagine sitting there crapping with people watching you!"

The thought obviously horrified him, and Don agreed in general, though he could see nothing wrong with being enthroned in the presence of one person, the right person, from whom you had no secrets. But he did not know Matt nearly well enough to say so, and he changed the subject.

"One thing I'm glad we haven't borrowed from the Romans, though. D'you know about garum?"

"No. What's that?"

Don explained.

"Eeeewww!" Matt screwed up his face. "Putrid!"

"Literally. Mum bought some Thai fish sauce once, the nearest thing you can get these days. And experimented with it. Yuck! After that it festered for a year before she chucked it. And you know what fish sauce is called in Thai?"

He was deliberately testing the water here.

"Prick nam plah!"

"Not really?" Matt's grin of sheer delight showed that his heart was in the right place.

"Really. And hey! At Almuñécar - that's a bit beyond Málaga - there was a factory where the Romans made the stuff. You can still see the tanks where it was fermented. Must have stunk worse than a sewer. With luck I can persuade the parents to take me there. And there's another reason for going."

Don was testing the water again.

"The Roman name for Almuñécar. It was Sexi."

"Oh? What was it, then?"

"Bugger it, I mean Sexi was its name."

"You're kidding!"

"Nope. Just think, you could say you'd been to the only genuinely Sexi place in Europe. Or the world. So if we do go, like to come too?"

"You bet! Do your parents know about the name?"

"Pop does, probably. He knows everything. But I wouldn't mention it to him. No way. He's a bit, um, stuffy about that sort of thing."

"What is he? Teacher?"

"No. He's an archdeacon."

That got the usual reaction. "What do archdeacons do?"

"Oh, they call them the bishop's eyes. Sort of regional managers for the bishop. Liaise between him and the parishes and the priests. Don't have a church of their own."

"Where do you live?"

"Bath."

That got the usual reaction too.

"So what are they doing the rest of the week? Apart from Sexi?"

"Probably going off on coach excursions. They're mad on Moorish stuff."

"And you'll be free? Apart from Sexi?"

"Hope so, but have to negotiate. If we're allowed, hang out together? Check out the town? Find a better beach?"

"I'm on!"

"And hey, know what?" They both spoke together, read each other's minds, laughed, and continued together. "There's a nudist beach too!"

"Can't miss! How do we get there?"

"It's only three kilometres away. Just walk along the beach, I suppose. It's all public."

"Wheeeee!" They grinned at each other in lascivious comradeship.

But it was time to eat, and they went to collect their parents.

Over the meal, Don asked if they could go to Almuñécar one day. Yes, said Pop, he'd been thinking the same. There was an excursion there on Wednesday, so he'd book them in. Could Matt come with them? Er, yes, if his parents were willing. And tomorrow there was an excursion to Ronda, and on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday to Málaga, Seville and Gaucín, which they wanted to go on. Don said firmly that he'd rather stay in Estepona with Matt, and he laid out their plans, or those that were fit for chaste ears. At the other table, presumably, much the same was going on, because Don saw Matt grinning across at him. Mum and Pop agreed to talk it over with the ... um ... what was their surname? Don didn't know.

So Pop went over and suggested they all have coffee in the lounge. There it was agreed that the boys could go off together, and ground-rules were hammered out. The Oswalds (as they proved to be) were pretty laid back. All they insisted on was that, because of the muggers, the boys stay together and be careful. The Muirs further insisted that they consume no alcohol, go no further west than the end of the main beach (no prizes for guessing why), and report to the Oswalds at lunchtime. As for the Sexi trip, not that anyone called it that, the Oswalds were happy to be rid of Matt for the whole day.

When it was all sorted, the boys went down in triumph to the now almost deserted beach, and began to get to know each other.

On Monday they investigated the bustling flea market, the marina filled with multi-million-pounds-worth of boats, the bullring which looked like a sculpture by Henry Moore (though they agreed that corridas weren't their scene), and the tatty tourist shops. They drank soft drinks by the gallon, and illicit beer in moderation. The Oswalds were far more generous with spending money than the Muirs, but Matt was equally generous in sharing it.

They were saving up the Costa Natura for the end of the week, and they made the Playa del Castor their headquarters. It was quieter than the main beach, more desirable - it seemed to be turd-free - and with more desirable patrons - plenty of beautiful boys and plenty of girls, some topless. Matt stared at both impartially, and Don felt it wise to do the same. Both developed the art of staring without seeming to. They had a whale of a time.

When they got back to the hotel, they turned by unspoken consent into the nearest of their rooms, which happened to be Don's. Without any inhibitions, Matt stripped to the buff, grabbed a towel, and disappeared into the shower, leaving Don to ponder on what he'd just seen - markedly more developed than his own. Soon Matt emerged, plying his towel, and Don took his place. When he came out, Matt was still naked, but now erect and gently stroking himself.

"Need to get rid of the thoughts of the day," he announced. "Do you mind?"

"Not a bit. I need to too."

They lay down, each on a bed, each attending to his own needs. Matt was obviously and properly dirty-minded. But whether he's straight or gay, thought Don, I've still no idea. Certainly no suggestion so far of a joint effort. So he probed.

"Matt, what are you thinking of?"

"Beautiful bodies" was the unhelpful reply.

"And which was the most beautiful body today?"

"Hmmm. Maybe that girl with the frisbee this afternoon. Who do you think?"

"Well, maybe that boy in the rainbow speedos."

"Yes, he was cute. Take your point."

Which no way answered the major question. But both were close to coming, and the matter was shelved.

Tuesday followed a similar pattern, ending with a race to see who came first.

The Sexi Wednesday was different but just as enjoyable. Mum and Pop put themselves out to be nice to Matt, without in the least cottoning on to the sub-plot. They started in the archaeological park with the garum factory and its battery of fermenting tanks cut into the solid rock. They moved on to the aqueduct which had supplied fresh water to the site. They ended at the museum where Don studied the tall and narrow Dressel 17 amphorae with markedly more enthusiasm than Matt did. He also studied the painted inscriptions on them which, like a modern label, described the contents.

Matt was much more taken with a miniature bronze phallus, erect, beautifully made, and adorned not only with balls but with wings and a ring for suspension.

"A fascinum," explained Don. "A charm against the evil eye. You'd wear it on a necklace or a bracelet."

In a kiosk outside they spotted a postcard of the fascinum labelled SEXI SOUVENIR, and Matt bought several while Don distracted Mum's and Pop's attention.

Thursday followed the same pattern as Monday and Tuesday, except that Pop and Mum had gone to Seville, a long way away, and would not be back till late. By prior arrangement the Oswalds, having dumped their daughter in the hotel creche, took the boys out for the evening as a thank-you to Don for the Sexi trip. They went with a coach-full of Brits from other hotels to a display of flamenco dancing somewhere in the hills inland, dinner thrown in and as much wine as you could hold. The dancing was spectacular. So was the booze. The Oswalds did not seem to mind how much the boys put back, and when they finally staggered to the coach they were almost legless.

On the way home some of the revellers started taking the piss out of the bashful young courier. "Billy," they sang to his profound embarrassment, "has a two-foot willy!" Which led on to renderings of 'The Harlot of Jerusalem' and 'The Engineer's Song', highly educational to boys who had heard neither before. They enjoyed themselves hugely, and the Oswalds seemed totally unfazed. If Mum and Pop had been there, Don thought wuzzily, none of them would have known where to look.

Friday saw the boys up late, too late even for breakfast. They eventually made it to the Playa del Castor to complete their recovery and then, after a drink at a kiosk and reporting to the Oswalds, set out on the climax of the week. Their friendship was sealed by now. Matt put an arm round Don's shoulder, and Don revelled in the contact.

As they ambled along the beach, a big notice board announced the beginning of the Costa Natura. Beyond it everyone was stark naked and, curiously, seemed to be stratified roughly by age. The first stratum they hit was marked by drooping boobs, sagging bellies, and white body hair. Not in the least what they'd expected. "Fucking hell!" muttered Matt, in deep disappointment.

But soon they moved into the middle-aged zone, abreast of a complex of buildings which a notice said was a naturist centre, open to non-members on payment of a fee, with holiday flats to rent. Except that it called them condominiums, a transatlantic word which Don had met in his researches on the net but was not otherwise in his vocabulary.

"Why does that word always make me laugh?" he murmured to Matt.

"Because your mind's as dirty as mine."

Beyond the buildings they entered the youth department, which was what they were really after. They were now in another world, an exotic world full, as far as the males went, of studs, twinks, teens and pre-teens, if Don had his terminology right.

"Oh God," he said under his breath. "Look at that one! Red hair and big dick. I'd give anything to have a go with him."

"Same here." Matt was wide-eyed. "And that girl with the big boobies. And the bloke with her. Jesus, look at his ...! Don, you ever had sex with anyone?"

"No, worse luck."

"Nor me. But let me loose with this lot ..."

The nudists, unaware of the threat, were totally unconcerned. There was not a hard-on to be seen. Not even on Don and Matt, who were still clothed and carried their towels in front to disguise things even more. Beforehand, they had contemplated stripping off and joining the majority. But they couldn't, not in this state. At the far end they stopped and consulted.

"Christ! No way am I stripping off here," said Matt.

"Nor me. My thing's positively hurting."

"So's mine. Back to the hotel and deal with them there?"

Defeated but yet triumphant, they beat a retreat. Through the youth, middle-aged and geriatric wards, and all the way home, the faithful towels did their duty. Only in the safety of Don's room could they cast them aside.

"Whew!" said Matt, stepping out of his shorts. "Quick shower, then to work!"

Don sat on the end of the bed, mentally panting. Matt soon emerged, as rampant as when he had gone in, and stood in front of Don, his head hidden in his towel as he scrubbed his hair dry, his equipment throbbing a foot from Don's face. As clear an invitation as Don could wish for.

"Do you want me to ...?"

"Course. Go ahead."

So Don leant forward and cradled the whiskery balls in his hand and fed his mouth over the cock.

"Geroff!" shouted Matt, backing away. He swung his fist into Don's face and knocked him flat on his back on the bed.

"You fucking poof! I meant go ahead on your own cock, not mine!"

Don clapped his hands over his nose and mouth. Through waves of pain he was vaguely aware of Matt pulling on his shorts, running out and slamming the door. But the worst pain came from wounded pride.

A moment later there was a knock and the door opened again. "You all right, dear?" said Mum's voice. "We've just bumped into Matt, who said we'd better take a look at you. He seemed very upset. Have you ... Ohhhhh!" Matt had lowered his hands to reveal blood pouring from his nose on to the sheet. Mum rushed over, Pop at her heels.

"Oh, Don! Were you mugged?"

Incapable of speech, Don shook his head slightly.

"Then how ...? Did Matt do this? Did he hit you?"

Don nodded fractionally.

"But why?"

Dimly, he saw a dismal prospect ahead. The balloon was going to go up and he could do bugger all about it. But right now he was in no state to explain, or even to think, and merely shook his head again.

"I think he's too shocked to talk, Janet," said Pop with unexpected insight. "You look after him. I will find Matt. And his parents."

In her younger days Mum had been a nurse, and she knew what to do. With Don's face flannel, and with tissues which he kept beside the bed for a quite different purpose, she cleaned him up and inspected the damage.

"I don't think it's too bad, dear. Your nose doesn't seem broken, and your teeth aren't loose, though your lip's cut. But I'm sure it hurts like billy-o. Look" - she folded the cold wet flannel into a wad - "hold this to your face, as firmly as you can. It'll help stop the bleeding and reduce the swelling. I'll just nip back to our room for some paracetamol. All right?"

Astonishingly, Don promptly fell asleep. His mind was already knocked out, and his body followed suit. He did not wake when Mum returned, nor when she checked his pulse and breathing, nor when Pop came back and they held a muttered conference and decided he could safely be left while they went down to dinner.

Nor, of course, was he aware of what was said in the dining room. Pop had found Matt in his room, full of righteous indignation. He had not denied that he hit Don, and he had said why. Pop fetched Mr Oswald in from the beach, and the two men and Matt talked in the lounge. Matt told the whole tale, unvarnished, including their jerking off sessions on previous days, including the trip to Costa Natura and its aftermath.

"Don's gay," he ended, "and he must have got it into his head that I was gay. But there was no way I was going to let him, um, interfere with me."

Mr Oswald backed him up, outspokenly. "Look, Kenneth" - it riled Pop to be addressed by his first name by someone he hardly knew - "all we were bothered about was that Matt shouldn't be by himself, remember? Because of those muggers. It was you who insisted they shouldn't go to the nudist beach. OK, so they shouldn't have gone. But I'm not in the least surprised they did. I'd have gone there myself. That's what being a boy is all about. So is all the rest of what they did. And if I'd been groped by a poof, I'd have socked him too."

He almost added "Wouldn't you?" but had second thoughts. Perhaps it was not the question to ask a pompous grey-haired clergyman. "I'm sorry Don had to get hurt. But I stand by Matt. And so will my wife."

All this Pop reported to Mum. Don, they agreed, had probably learnt a good lesson, however painfully. But what rocked them to the foundation was the news that their son was gay.

They were right-wing, in every way, the children of priests, brought up traditionally, insulated from the hurly burly of modern life. Pop's career had started in a rural parish where his flock's problems were traditional ones. His skills at organisation and diplomacy had led him early into the archdeaconry, where he interacted with church officials, with vicars and churchwardens, not with ordinary inhabitants of an increasingly permissive world. Mum, as a reception teacher, was marvellous with five-year-olds but a total stranger to the problems of modern teenagers.

In their younger years, homosexuality had been a crime in law and a sin in the eyes of the church. Their upbringing told them it was repulsive. Very reluctantly they accepted it with their heads, but not with their hearts. Those who suffered such weaknesses of the flesh should be pitied and helped. Of course they should. But certainly not encouraged. The same went for all forms of extra-marital sex.

So how to deal with Don? Their half-hearted meal over, they went up and found him awake. He looked at them without emotion, his brain too numb for fear or evasion or rebellion. The truth would out, and he would take what was coming. They asked how he was feeling, and sat on the bed.

"Donald," Pop began. The full name meant trouble. "Matt has told us what happened. Everything. How you, ah, pleasured yourselves. By yourself, we might overlook it. But not together. He told us how you went to the nudist beach. We are disappointed that you disobeyed us. And he told us what happened afterwards. We dislike his attitude and his values. Had we known about them, we would not have allowed you to go off together.

"But we do understand why he hit you. If you tried to rob him of his money, would you not expect him to resist? You tried to rob him of his, ah, purity. Is it not equally natural that he resisted? In our opinion he over-reacted, but we understand why he did, and we cannot blame him for it. What have you to say to that?"

"I know, Pop. It was my fault." It was difficult to get his puffy lips to work. "He knew I was gay, and I thought he was too. From what he'd said. I even asked him if he wanted me to, and he said yes. But he'd misunderstood me. I got it wrong, that's all. Just bloody wrong." He saw them wince at his language, but didn't care. "So I understand why he hit me. Sort of."

But only sort of. He had made it plain enough to Matt that he was gay. But how had he misread Matt so badly? Or had Matt misled him? He had come across as utterly uninhibited and blatantly bi, equally interested in bedding boys and girls. Had he pretended to be interested in boys so that Don shouldn't feel left out? Was he interested in other boys but not in him? Or was it all just bravado? Don could not work it out at all. He simply felt let down. Betrayed.

"Well, if you understand that, you have learnt a useful lesson. But what distresses us much more is to hear that you think you are, ah, gay."

Don had not intended to fight back, but he had to. "I don't think I'm gay. I know I am."

"Hmmm. Well, when you discovered you had unnatural desires, why did you not come to us for advice, to help you overcome them?"

"But Pop, you can't overcome them. They're not unnatural. It's the way you're made. It's like being left-handed. You don't try to change that, do you, Mum? I can't help it."

"Maybe you cannot help yourself. But, with prayer, God can help you." Don groaned to himself. "This is not the time to discuss these matters in depth. All we are saying is that true God-given love can exist only between man and woman. Not between man and man. What this modern age likes to call homosexual love is really only lust, which is wrong. The only place for sex is in marriage.

"Now, we cannot dictate what thoughts come into your mind. Remember, it is not a sin to be tempted. Only to yield to temptation. But we can forbid you to act on your thoughts. To allow a temptation to develop into what you like to think is love. To allow it to develop into, ah, physical activity. Those we do forbid. Will you promise to obey us?"

Don looked at them dully. He had expected to submit to whatever they said, but he had not expected that. He knew, in the depth of his being, that true love was possible between males, and he hankered for it. He could not give that promise. It would be betraying himself. It would be like castrating himself - castrating not his body, but his mind. And he felt that they had betrayed him by demanding it.

"No," he muttered, his voice tight. "No. I'm not tempted by anyone I know now. But I'm bound to meet new people. I can't tell what might happen then. I can't promise. I won't promise." He burst into tears.

Mum and Pop sighed, realising that, for the moment, enough was enough. They said goodnight and left like inquisitors, aware of the frailty of wayward humanity but sternly convinced that God was behind them.

Don slept fitfully and woke with a dull ache in his face. Luckily the Oswalds had left early for their flight to Newcastle, and their own to Bristol was at lunchtime. Mercifully, too, his parents were brooding and quiet, which allowed him to search his soul.

Yes, they were betraying him. That did surprised him little, because he was well aware their views were old-fashioned. He could even - in the light of bitter experience - go along with them in deploring casual sex. That had been the name of the game with Matt. Two horny youngsters seizing an opportunity. Fun, but no depth to it. A million miles from love. Yes, he could forego jerk-offs or blow-jobs with the likes of Matt.

But he had deep needs as well as shallow ones. He pondered the issue about love, real love, the love of his choice. He had not met it yet, but he longed for it, more clearly now than before. He could never agree to foregoing that, if and when he did meet it.

But what hurt most of all was the mistake he had made. After a great week, everything had come crashing down round his ears. He thought he'd read Matt right, but he'd read him wrong. He'd been over-trusting and made a bloody fool of himself. He freely admitted that. But he wasn't solely to blame, was he? Hadn't Matt led him up the garden path and dumped him in the shit? They were so like-minded in so many ways. They'd had a really cool time together. They'd built up a good friendship. Yet Matt had let him down with a thump.

In his devastation, Don failed to notice the pun. He'd trusted a friend and been deceived. What price, then, his faith in other friends? In knee-jerk reaction, his philosophy of life swung from blithe trust to rank mistrust.

The rest of term was purgatory. The bottom had fallen out of his world. The cheerful, outgoing, mischievous boy turned into a morose, introspective, suspicious one. All the fun had been knocked out of him, and all the randiness. He no longer even wanked. At school, he could trust neither himself nor anyone else. His friends tried to find out what was wrong, to help him through whatever it was. He told them to mind their own business, that he could look after himself. He hated himself for being unreasonable and redirected his self-hate on to them, which made him hate himself the more. One by one, they gave him up as a bad job. He too became a tortoise hiding inside his shell.

At home, he tried hard to keep his relationship with Pop and Mum alive, because it was his one remaining lifeline to normality. But they insisted on harping on that grisly subject, badgering him, laying down the law, irked by his refusal to toe the line. Don's life was at its lowest ebb. It would have been lower still had he known that they were in touch with the diocesan counselling service.

There was only one bright prospect to look forward to. For the last two years he had been on a dig at a Roman temple north of Bath. The archaeology and the site had captivated him, and he liked to think he made a useful contribution. He was going again. It was a world totally detached from home and school, with a totally different agenda, stimulating but safe. He liked the regular diggers well enough. They were all much older, they were only acquaintances, and they were no threat. And as for Bob ... well, Bob was perhaps the only person left in his life whom he did still trust implicitly.

 

Chapter 3. Saturday: the art of being kind

So many gods, so many creeds,
So many paths that wind and wind,
While just the art of being kind
Is all the sad world needs.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, The World's Need

Bob Gill was a retired solicitor, an amateur archaeologist of long standing and high repute, and president of the local archaeological society into the bargain.

When word had reached him that a farmer had uncovered ancient masonry at Nettleton, out in the middle of nowhere beside the Fosse Way, he went to look, and his report was so promising that the society decided to excavate. His judgement had proved spot-on. Under his direction they had now spent two and a half seasons on it, each of a fortnight at Easter and a month in the summer, and had already exposed an impressive rural temple and parts of some associated buildings. And there was obviously a great deal more still to find.

This summer, the first week of the dig overlapped with school term, but Bob knew with pleasure that from the second week he would have the services of young Don Muir, the archdeacon's son. He had been with them ever since they began at Nettleton, when he had just turned thirteen, starting as a complete novice but revealing a skill and a patience way beyond that of the other regulars.

That's one of the drawbacks of amateur archaeology, Bob reflected wryly. Christine Banks, his supervisor, was thoroughly reliable, of course. But the rest of the old faithfuls were society members, and you had to take what came. It was hard to persuade them to work down a layer at a time, not to burrow indiscriminately away in pursuit of fancied buried treasure. Unless you kept a close eye on them they might not even notice when the soil they were trowelling changed from orange to black.

But Don was a natural - disciplined, meticulous, eagle-eyed - who understood what he was uncovering, as far as anyone could understand it at first sight. He was too young to be made a supervisor - it would put older noses out of joint - but Bob entrusted him with important jobs as a matter of course, while he himself and Christine supervised the less competent.

And this year they were to have another youngster with them. His father had written quite recently to say that he had heard about the dig through the archdeacon, and to ask if his son could join them. What was his name? He found the file. Ah yes, Mark Bushby, son of the rector of - he smiled at the heading on the notepaper - Chew Magna with Nempnett Thrubwell and Ubley. Better put him with Don to learn the ropes. They should get on, for Don was a friendly soul.

Both of them would be camping in Bill Dring's field, the only ones who were. Thank God for a helpful landowner who not only allowed them to dig, but lent them a field for volunteers to pitch tents in. The site was inaccessible without your own transport. Everyone else, being much older, had a car and commuted daily. The boys obviously could not. Mark lived the other side of Bristol. Don - well, he lived at Pucklechurch, not all that far away, and might possibly have cadged lifts from his parents. But they were busy people and he preferred to be independent. Knowing the archdeacon, Bob could not blame him.

On Saturday morning, the first day of the holidays, the Muirs' car was the first to nose up the track to the camping field. They knew the drill. Don's tent was a large and sturdy one, easy to set up. They had just dumped his clobber inside - sleeping bag, clothes, food, cooking equipment - when the Bushbys appeared. The parents were old friends, but the boys had never met, and regarded each other warily. Both were subdued, even cagey. Mark's shoddy little tent dated back to the early days of Mr Bushby's marriage, before Mark arrived, when he and his wife had bought it for cheap holidays. Not having touched it since, he had forgotten how it went up and Mark had never used it. Between them they sussed it out and got it up beside Don's.

"Hope this keeps the rain off," Don said pessimistically, fingering the thin cotton. He didn't offer Mark the hospitality of his own spacious tent. He might have to, if it came to it, out of humanity. But not till then.

When Mark's gear had been unloaded, the parents made to leave - clergymen work hard, even on Saturdays - amid the usual shower of exhortations.

"You're the old hand here, Don," said his Mum. "You'll show Mark the ropes, won't you? Got your mobile? Don't forget to give us a ring from time to time."

Before driving off Philip Bushby had a quick word with the archdeacon. He wished he had more time to spare for his son. He wished he was better at coping with the problems of adolescents.

"Thanks for putting us on to this, Kenneth. Mark's been very low recently. Don't know why. I'm hoping Don's company will perk him up."

"And I am hoping the same for Don. He is in a similar state."

But he did not say why, nor voice his qualms about what the boys might get up to. He had considered stopping Don from coming at all, but felt that would be unreasonably harsh. Anyway, Philip was thoroughly decent and reliable, so his son should be too. But then, but then - he and Janet were decent people, he hoped, and look at their son ...

The cars gone, the boys inspected each other again. Not quite with suspicion, because both were here to get away from malice and bad feeling, and were hoping for the best. But they inspected with caution, because their trust and their confidence were in tatters. Their shells were in full use.

Don saw a tall boy with straight mousy hair, a long narrow mouth that looked a stranger to smiles, and hazel eyes that seemed to have their shutters down. A closed face, but one that promised strength should it ever open up. Mark saw a figure a couple of inches shorter, with an unruly mop of black curls and a younger face, potentially lively and mobile, but weary in the mouth and the dark brown eyes. Neither felt in the least attracted to the other, for their passions were switched off.

Don broke the awkward silence. "Well, there's not much to show you here. Water from a tap outside the hay-barn over there. Cattle trough under it, useful for washing in. We look after our own breakfasts and teas. Bob's happy to buy stuff for us - milk, bread, anything within reason. The farm's a mile away and nobody ever comes here, so you can pee anywhere. For crapping, there's a Portaloo at the site. But don't use that just for peeing - fills it up unnecessarily fast. Down there, just wander discreetly off. Preferably out of sight of Miss Dinsdale. She's an old prude. Doubt she's peed in her life - much too disgusting a habit. For lunch someone brings in a crate of sandwiches and things, for everyone, and old Mrs Prichard makes endless brew-ups. We work from nine to five in theory, though it's pretty flexible. Reckon that's about it. "

"What do you do in the evening?"

"Get my head down early. Saves on batteries. But I read. Listen to my walkman. Or sometimes go to the site and brood. I get a ... sort of calm feeling down there." An odd thing to confess to a stranger, but he looks as if he could do with some calming. "Come and see it, if you're ready, and meet Bob."

"Where's everyone else?" It was nearly eleven and there were no cars in the field.

"Oh, on the site. They don't come this way. They park on the Fosse Way."

Don led the way across the camping field and along the hedge beside a level field of ripening wheat. They climbed a stile, and immediately the ground dropped away and a view opened up. Here Don stopped. He was beginning to feel better, away from his parents' heavy hand. In company with this quiet bloke who for some reason he already felt an affinity with. At a place which always had the power to soothe his mind.

"You get a good overall view from here."

They were standing on the right-hand side of a small valley, looking down it. It was utterly typical of the region - there must be hundreds like it in the Cotswolds - but it gave off, despite the activity, a curious atmosphere of peace. Below on their left flowed a small stream, flanked by occasional trees and with steep ground on the far side. Across the valley in front ran a narrow road.

"That's the Fosse Way," said Don. "The Roman road. Would have looked much the same in Roman times, except for the hedges."

Along the verge were a number of cars, and on their side of the stream and of the road was the site itself, showing up as a series of trenches and brown spoil tips, peopled by a dozen figures, mostly on their knees but one or two pushing wheelbarrows. Not far from the road was a sizeable wooden hut with a bright blue Portaloo alongside.

"That's the site hut. The temple itself's at this end, near the stream. Just beyond the last tree. We've pretty well finished digging that."

"Why here? The temple, I mean."

"Ah. Big question. We're not talking about Romans proper, of course. Not Italian Romans. The guys here were Britons. OK, they'd borrowed quite a bit of Roman culture. After a while most of them could speak Latin, round here. But they were still Britons, and probably spoke British among themselves. So the architecture of the temple isn't Italian, it's British. And the god here was British. We'll never know why they picked this spot, but they must have thought it was sacred. So they built the temple here, and people came to say thank you to the god for doing whatever he did, or ask him to do things for them, and give him offerings."

"Who was he?"

"Interesting. In the towns and forts they often worshipped imported Roman gods, of course. But a lot of pre-Roman gods survived too, specially out in the country. Like Nodens at Lydney. Like the one here. We think he was called Maponus. A very British name. It means 'the youth'. He survived in Welsh legend as a sort of hero called Mabon. His main centre was up north, beyond Hadrian's Wall, where there are quite a lot of altars to him. Up there they identified him with the Roman Apollo and called him Apollo Maponus, and the carvings show him with dogs or with a lyre. He seems to have done the same job as Apollo, looking after hunting and music.

"But this is the first time he's turned up this far south, and he seems different here. But we've no idea what he did. We've found a bronze plaque inscribed 'To the god Maponus.' Plain Maponus, no Apollo. And a few little figures, and some broken bits of bigger statues. But no sign of dogs or lyres. Just a young man, naked."

"If the temple's finished, what are you digging now?"

"Well, it all turned into quite a settlement. Just beyond the temple, down by the stream, there's a building which seems to have been a hostel, where people who came here could stay over. And we're finding more and more buildings up the slope to the right. One of them was probably the priest's house. Another's got so much broken pottery outside that it looks like a restaurant to feed the visitors. We think another was a shop, selling tourist tat. You know, Roman equivalent of postcards saying 'Souvenir of Nettleton', or little figures of the god to put on your bracelet. Just like now."

"What sort of date?"

"Started early in the second century and gradually grew. Hit its peak in the early fourth century. Then declined, maybe suppressed by Christians. Then revived again, only to be smashed up for good around 400, maybe by Irish raiders, maybe by Christians. Or that's how it looks at the moment, but it's all up for grabs. There aren't many places where we've got down to the earliest levels. Er, you done any digging before?"

"No, but I know what you mean. Stratigraphy. Latest layers on top, earliest at the bottom."

"That's right. You dig down layer by layer, going back in time. Very carefully, very slowly. Well, not really dig. OK, you use a shovel on the topsoil, but below that it's all trowelling. Scraping. Brushing. Finishing one layer in a trench before you start on the next. Most of it's just a slog, not exciting at all. You're not going to be finding coins and things every minute."

"I know. I watch Time Team."

"Well, yes, but even on that they only show the interesting bits."

"What'll I be doing?"

"No idea. Let's find Bob and ask."

They walked down through the site. The workers, men and women, were all middle-aged or elderly. They greeted Don with delight, and obviously regarded him with affection and respect. Don introduced everyone, and Mark tried to keep up with the names. Finally, at the hut, they found Bob, a rotund and jovial man with a round red face crowned with a thatch of white hair, rarely seen without a pipe in his mouth. He welcomed Don like a prodigal son, and Mark with warmth.

"Thanks for joining us," he said, beaming at him. "I hope you'll like us. We're all dotty, mind you, but harmlessly dotty. This is your first dig, is it?"

"Yes, Mr Gill."

"Bob, please. Nobody calls me Mr Gill. Well, I thought of putting you with Don. He knows his onions. Better than most of us. And he can show you the ropes. That OK with you both?" They nodded. "Well, look, Mrs P's just got elevenses brewed up. Grab a mug from her, and Don, you show Mark round and explain what's what. You're up to date to the end of our Easter session. Then come back to me and I'll fill you both in on what we've found these last few days. Mouth-watering, I can tell you!"

So they grabbed a mug of coffee apiece and Don gave Mark a conducted tour. The temple, which stood on a small knoll, was not in the least classical. When complete, it had had an octagonal central tower - the sanctuary itself - surrounded by an octagonal lean-to portico of columns on a low wall. All of it had now been cleared and its limestone walls rose barely three feet above the original ground level. The higher masonry, Don explained, had been robbed by later generations for re-use elsewhere.

The hostel lay mostly at a lower level, beside the stream. It was a large square, the uphill side consisting of a long narrow hall, much of which had been cleared down to the floor.

"Entrance hall and reception desk here, we think. Nice and easy to dig because it's all above water level. Near either end" - he pointed - "a doorway and a flight of steps down to an open courtyard. Little rooms leading off the courtyard. Bedrooms, we suspect - that's why we call this the hostel.

"And that's where the trouble starts. You can see the trenches down there have all got water in. The stream's flooded since Roman times. Dumped masses of silt on the valley floor. Which has risen in level. So the stream level has risen too. And so the courtyard and everything off it is deep in silt. And in water - we haven't reached the floor there yet, but it's well below stream level. Wasn't then, of course, but it is now. Bob was going to get a pump in, so we can go on down. Hope he has."

The other buildings, notably the shop and the restaurant, were still at an early stage of excavation, and had little yet to show.

They sought out Bob again, who brought them up to date. "You'll have seen that we've finished on the temple. There's nothing new that upsets our dating. The deposits were very jumbled, and there was a George III halfpenny surprisingly deep down, as if somebody had been rootling there quite recently. But this last week we found four lovely things opposite the door. One was a defixio. Well, I think it is. Looks just like those from Bath and Uley and suchlike.

"Oh, sorry." He had noticed Mark looking puzzled. "A defixio's a curse. If you thought someone had done you wrong, you got a little sheet of lead and scratched a message on it. 'Dear god, so-and-so's nicked my ring, or whatever, and if he doesn't bring it back please afflict him with horrible diseases.' That sort of thing, sometimes with lots of gory detail. Then you usually rolled it up, so nobody but the god could read it, and left it in the temple. It was quite a habit in these parts. There've found lots in the spring at Bath, and at other temples too. But ours wasn't rolled up. It's got a nail-hole for fixing to the wall. But the handwriting's a pain to read, so I sent it off to Tom Rowson in Oxford. Can't wait for his report.

"Right. Find number two is still here." He led them into the hut. There stood a limestone altar, with one front angle broken off. They squatted down to look. It was inscribed in beautiful and regular lettering

DEO
MAPONO
IVVENVM • CONIVG[            
VEPOGENVS •[      
BRIGOMAG[      
V • S • L • [     

"Wow!" exclaimed Don with delight. "So it was Maponus! Not even Apollo Maponus!"

"Pretty certain now. Don told you about him?" he asked Mark, careful that he should not be left out.

"Yes." Mark was thrilled. Coming on top of what Don had spelled out so clearly, this was gripping stuff. "What does it say?"

"Well, we haven't had the experts in yet, and my Latin's pretty rusty, but this is where I've got to. The first two lines are easy - 'To the god Maponus'.

"The third line's difficult. It seems to describe Maponus, but the last word looks like coniugi, 'husband or wife', and iuvenum is 'of young men', which is very odd.

"The next two lines are names, with et - 'and' - missing between them. Good British names too, not Roman, even though it's in Latin.

"And the abbreviations at the end are the standard formula for dedications, with the last letter lost - remind me what they stand for, Don."

"Votum solverunt libentes merito."

"Oh yes, thanks. So the whole thing says 'To the god Maponus, spouse of young men (or whatever), Vepogenus and Brigomaglus willingly and deservedly discharged their vow.' That right, Don?"

Don was staring at the altar, frowning. "That's right, Bob. All except 'spouse', which is weird. Anyway, coniugi is too short. Look, it's all beautifully laid out. Coniugi would end here, but the line ought to be symmetrical and end about here. Looks like there are four or five letters missing, not just one. We want a longer word. See what I mean?"

They saw, but could not help. "Take your point," said Bob. "It is beautiful lettering. Second century, surely. Earlyish second century. Yes, you'd expect the lines to be symmetrical."

"Wait a mo. Pop should be back by now." Don fished out his mobile and called home. "Sorry to bother you, Pop, but a quick question. They've found a lovely altar, but it's broken. There's a word C-O-N-I-V-G, broken off. A noun applying to a person, in the dative singular. Coniugi is the obvious answer, but it's too short. Could you have a look in the dictionary, please, and see if there are any other nouns starting with coniug ...? Thanks." He waited with pencil poised over Bob's pad, then scribbled. "Right. Right. That's the only other one? Thanks, Pop. We'll show it to you when you're over. Bye.

"There's only one alternative to coniugi," he reported. "Look."

He quickly copied the inscription, adding the missing letters. It now read

DEO
MAPONO
IVVENVM • CONIVGATORI
VEPOGENVS • ET
BRIGOMAGLVS
V • S • L • M

"There. Coniugatori. It fits the space beautifully."

"What does it mean?"

"Someone who unites. A uniter. It's used of Hymen, the god of marriage who unites couples in love. Pop sounded a bit disapproving." As well he might.

"Maponus, uniter of young men?" asked Bob. "Well, I agree it fits much better on the stone. And I suppose it makes more sense than 'spouse'."

It smacked of gay partnerships to him, as if Vepogenus and Brigomaglus had set up the altar as a thank-you to the god for binging them together. Time was, very recently, when he would have found the thought repugnant. But he must have grown more broad-minded, because it no longer bothered him a bit. Yet he was reluctant to put ideas into the heads of a pair of adolescents, both sons of clergymen. Better move on.

But Don had ideas in his head already, and when he glanced at Mark, who had been following intently, he sensed that he had too.

"I wonder who they were," he said thoughtfully, "Vepogenus and Brigomaglus. But we'll never know."

"Find number three," said Bob, moving on with determination, "is here too."

He opened small padded box. Inside was a thin bronze sheet with a crusted green patina, about six inches by four and somewhat bent. It bore a message created by punching little holes as if with a nail.

"MAPONO BRANVS ET DOCCO V.S.L.M.," Don read out loud. "To Maponus, Branus and Docco willingly and deservedly discharged their vow. Plain Maponus again. And two male names again. But we'll never know more about them either."

"And find number four," said Bob triumphantly, having kept the best till last, "is another that isn't here. He turned up the very day we started, and I've taken him down to Bath for a good wash and brush up in the museum. But here's a photo. Only a snap, not a proper one. We found the god himself!"

He laid a small colour print on the table. It showed a stone head ("life-size" said Bob), beautifully made, broken off at the neck, and a bit encrusted with soil. A young man, even a boy. The cheeks and chin were smoothly rounded and the mouth smiled gently and enigmatically, not unlike an archaic Greek statue. But this was no classical Mediterranean product. It was blatantly British. The eyes were slightly diamond-shaped, with their pupils and irises lightly marked in. The almost wig-like mop of hair was deeply carved into snake-like tresses, waving in the voluptuous curves beloved by British artists.

Bob was right. It could only be Maponus himself, fixing them with an expression of serene compassion. Don, as he stared, felt an unaccountable tightness in his throat. Or was it so unaccountable? He had been missing serenity and compassion for too long. And once again he sensed that Mark, motionless beside him, felt the same.

"Isn't he splendid?" Bob broke the long silence. "Ordinarily, he'd have stayed in the museum. But Miriam's bringing him back next week, and you can meet him in person. Somehow I felt he ought to be here for the duration, presiding over our feeble labours. Getting daft in my old age, aren't I?"

"No, Bob," replied Mark, who had hardly opened his mouth all morning. "Not daft at all. He's got a right to be here. This is his place. Where he belongs."

The others looked at him with surprise, and interest, and approval.

"Well, let's get you to work," Bob said. "I'd like you to have a go in the hostel, if you would. Various reasons. We've sorted out the uphill end and I want to see what happens round the courtyard. The water's lower than it was at Easter, and yes, Don, we have got a pump now. Start by clearing out one whole room. It's likely to go quite deep, in sticky silt, and it'll be hard work. Too hard for the others. And you're going to get dirty. Very dirty. Specially your feet." He looked at their trainers. "Not got wellies? Well, try those for size."

There was pile in a corner and, as they hunted for ones that fitted, Don's eye was caught by the tray of last week's small finds lying on the table. Ordinary bits of pottery and coins and suchlike went into small plastic bags, each labelled with details of where it was found. More fragile and important things were honoured with a sturdy plastic box. There was only one box in the tray. Quite a large one.

"What's this, Bob?"

"Oh, a knife. From the shop. It turned up yesterday." Bob sounded unenthusiastic.

"Mind if we look?"

Despite his reservations, Bob could not say no. They would have seen it anyway if they had been here when it was found. Don opened the box and lifted the cotton wool padding.

"Woohoo!" He could not restrain himself. His randiness might have been beaten out of him, but even the Archbishop of Canterbury would goggle at this sight. The knife, held to a stiff plastic sheet by elastic bands, was about eight inches long, half of its length a corroded iron blade, half of it a bone handle. And the handle was carved, exquisitely carved, into a phallus. Not life-size, but very lifelike. It was uncircumcised, slightly curved, and from the taut skin and the part-retracted foreskin it was obviously erect. Don made way for Mark to see, and looked across at Bob with amused interest. "Who found it?"

Bob could not help smiling at the memory. "Miss Dinsdale. I nearly had a heart attack when I saw what she'd got. But blow me, she was tickled pink! Pleased as punch!"

"No!" Don was astonished. "But she's so straight-laced! She has a fit if she spots you having a pee behind a bush a hundred yards away with your back to her."

Bob laughed. "Well, she's turned over a new leaf now."

Wonders never ceased. Don looked back at the knife. "Was this on sale at the shop, do you suppose?"

"Yes, I'm inclined to think so. There's a panel that looks as if it's meant for the owner to put his name on, but it's blank."

"Yes, here," said Mark, pointing. Over a length of a couple of inches the texture and roundness had been neatly shaved down to make a flat panel.

"It was at the back of the shop, where we think there was a wooden floor. I've a hunch that an assistant took a fancy to it, hid it under a floorboard, couldn't account for it at the next stocktaking, got the sack, and nobody ever recovered it. Pure guesswork, of course."

This was meat and drink to Mark. Re-peopling the past fired his imagination. But Bob was still anxious to move on.

"Right, let's get the pump in place."

They carried it down, a neat little two-stroke job with variable speeds.

"Let's try this room."

Bob lowered the intake pipe into the water, a couple of inches deep, at the bottom of the trench nearest to the stream, and laid out the discharge pipe. He explained the pump's controls, started it, and checked that the water was flowing into the stream.

The boys collected tools and a wheelbarrow and dug a foot-deep hole underwater as a sump. The dark brown mud was firm and they did not sink in when they stood on it. But it was disgustingly claggy, and one of them had to stand by the barrow to scrape it off the spade the other heaved up. By the time the sump was done and the pump was pumping merrily, it was lunchtime.

Lunch was utterly informal. People sat on anything handy within chatting distance, and banter flew around. Mark was the only newcomer, and they were measuring him up.

"Don must be a very good friend of yours, Mark, if he persuaded you to join this madhouse!"

"Oh, Don's not my friend," he blurted without thinking, and blushed. "I mean, yes, he is a friend, now, but I'd never met him before. Not before today."

He cast an apologetic glance at Don. If only I could handle a simple conversation, he thought gloomily. Like a normal human being.

A little later, talk swung his way again and they quizzed him about where he lived and what he was doing at school and, more slyly, about his girlfriends. That hurt, of course, but he could not take offence because their good nature was obvious. After all, in their innocent and elderly eyes, all teenage boys have girlfriends, don't they? But he was slow in answering and Don, as if sensing his discomfort, drew the conversation away. Mark cast him another glance, grateful this time, and wondered about Don's girlfriends.

Lunch over, they worked in harmony. They widened their trench until the wall appeared as expected, and lowered the new bit to the old level. They took turns to empty the wheelbarrow. It was hard work, demanding little thought, and rather soothing.

Then there was a diversion. On many digs, workers are expected to stick religiously to their own patch and not be distracted by what is happening elsewhere. Not so at Nettleton, where delights were democratically shared. Bob did nothing to forbid it - digs should be fun. Old Mr Wilmot, who was working in the restaurant, found a large sherd of pottery. He took it to the washing table to clean the soil off, peered at it, and cackled.

"Heehee! Look at this! Something to do with sex!" People converged, and it was passed from hand to hand.

"What does it say, Bob?"

"It's from an amphora. The writing's like a label, describing what was inside. But what it says, search me. Where's Don? Can you help?"

Don took it. It was the neck and part of one handle and a bit of the body. Painted on the shoulder was

CORD
SEX
PENVAR
EXCEL

"Yes, an amphora." He did not need to dredge his memory. "Dressel type 17. Late second century. Once held garum. Fish sauce. The writing's short for cordula Sexana penuarium excellens. 'Tuna sauce from Almuñécar, top wholesale quality'."

He looked up at the astonished faces, and smiled wanly. "No magic. Almuñécar's on the Costa del Sol. I was there on holiday at half term. You can still see the factory where they made this stuff. And in the museum they've got the brothers of this amphora."

He passed it on to someone else and jumped down into their trench. Mark, when he rejoined him a few minutes later, was astonished to see him crouched in a corner with tears on his cheeks, looking very young and utterly defenceless. After a moment's hesitation he put an arm round his shoulder and gave him a brief squeeze. He had not done that to anyone - and nobody had done it to him - since his mother died. For the life of him he could not think of anything to say, or anything else to do, but his heart bled. He simply knew that this gentle and intelligent boy had a big problem. Which made two of them.

As Don soon discovered. An hour later, Mark was on his haunches in the trench and Don was just back from the tip with an empty barrow when Mark heard a voice saying, "Don't you remember, Chris? He can't tell the difference." He shot to his feet in terror. All he could see was a middle-aged woman with a sheepish-looking man beside her - Hilary and her husband Jeff, he thought their names were - talking to an older woman he had not seen before. He looked at Don in wide-eyed and open-mouthed enquiry.

"Who's the other woman?"

"Who, Chris? Christine Banks, the supervisor. Bob's assistant. She's only just got here."

"What were they talking about?"

"Oh, Jeff's notorious for not being able to distinguish between different layers." Mark closed his eyes and let out a long breath of shocked relief. "What's up, Mark? You look as if you've seen a ghost."

"Nothing. It's all right. Sorry, don't mind me."

He bent down again, turning his back to Don's curious but sympathetic gaze. But it was a minute before he started shovelling again.

When the bottom of their trench was level, they both worked down below, and developed a new routine. Squat on your hunkers or kneel on a plastic kneeler, hold the shovel in one hand, scrape a thin layer of muck into it with the trowel in the other. When the shovel is full, empty it into a bucket. When the bucket is full, empty it into the barrow. When the barrow is full, take it to the tip. Barrowing trips were welcome, for the smell of ancient silt was strong.

Mark worked slowly at first, terrified of scraping too much at a time and being blasted for incompetence, but by imitating Don he gained confidence. They found absolutely nothing except a carbonised twig deposited by the water. Don sealed it in a plastic bag in case it was needed for radiocarbon dating, and demonstrated the system for recording the position of any object in a trench, in three dimensions.

They also met a layer of grit. "When a river floods, it'll have solid stuff in suspension," Don explained, "and the heaviest bits sink first. So a layer of grit marks the bottom of the silt from a later flood, and the top of the silt from an earlier one." From time to time, to confirm they were missing nothing, he emptied a bucket into a big sieve and riddled the silt away in the stream; but nothing was ever left behind.

It was hot in the sun, and it was peaceful. Apart from the interruptions, there was only the clinking of trowels, the murmur of conversations in other trenches, and the tinkle of a cascade on the stream nearby. Don had been right - the work was far from exciting. But despite the false alarm, Mark was happier than he had been for a long time, doing a useful job in an interesting place among kindly people. Don was happier too, back where he belonged, where he could put his distrust and rebellion behind him.

Both poked their heads a little further out of their shells and began to chat. Not incessantly, and interspersed with silences that were not in the least awkward. Their subject was archaeology. Don did most of the talking, with anecdotes about past seasons at Nettleton and with information from his store of knowledge, which was far more extensive than Mark's. From time to time Mark sat back on his heels and looked at Don as he expounded. From time to time he offered a parallel garnered from Time Team, or threw in a question.

They were taking the first steps towards getting to know each other, on safe, neutral, non-contentious territory. Each was seeing a new face which carried no threats or suspicions from the past. Each had been stuck in a chapter of his life's story which he had read and re-read and agonised over until his heart was sick. That chapter was not yet closed; but now, in the calm of Nettleton, each of them could take a clean page and start sketching the first immature introduction to a new chapter.

Work finished at five. Together they refuelled the pump and put their tools away. Together they went back to the camping field to wash in the cattle trough. Together they spread their filthy wet jeans out in the barn to dry - "better wear shorts tomorrow," Don commented. Together they prepared a meal from their combined stores. Way back this morning, Don had not intended to do that. But his gas stove was far better than Mark's ancient methylated spirit one, and they had already moved close enough to make separate cooking unthinkable.

"Don, if you don't mind," Mark announced when they had eaten and washed up, "I'm going back. To where we stopped this morning, above the site. To have another look."

To absorb more of the Nettleton calm, was Don's diagnosis. Yes, it gets to him the same way as it gets to me. We've a lot in common. And I reckon he needs the calm, just like I do.

"Mind if I come too?"

He saw that Mark was pleased. So they went, and sat, and looked, and thought. Not a word passed between them, but they came back in the twilight closer than when they had gone.

"Thanks, Don," said Mark as they reached the tents. "It's been a good day. But I'm knackered. I think I'll turn in."

"So'll I. And yes, it has been good. Night!"

 

Chapter 4. Sunday: see another's woe

Can I see another's woe,
And not be in sorrow too?
Can I see another's grief,
And not seek for kind relief?

William Blake, Songs of Innocence

But for a long time sleep was kept at bay by thoughts buzzing, insistent as mosquitoes, around their heads. Mark was thinking of Don. He liked him. Very much. He was intelligent, interesting, gentle, considerate. He had started off with great caution. Mark had seen that, for he had been cautious too. But then Don's good nature had come into play, and he had gone out of his way to put the new boy in the picture and at his ease. All that despite his problems, whatever they were. He was obviously very vulnerable. Mark wished he could offer comfort.

Yet already Don's friendly approach had eased some of his own torments. He was already opening up. He was aware of it. But he knew he could only open up so far and no further. He could never unburden himself to Don, never tell of his own shame, because it would invite scorn and derision. And that thought made his mind return, as it always did, to Chris's bed. Willy nilly his agonies flooded back and he howled inwardly. A sob which he failed to suppress reached Don's ears.

Don, meanwhile, was thinking along very much the same lines. Mark was so quiet, so thoughtful, so caring, and so obviously had a problem. He wished he could help him. They were friends already. They could be very good friends. But nothing more than that. His old randiness was still dormant. Anyway, there was no sign whatever that Mark was gay. He couldn't make any assumptions about him, as he'd so rashly made about Matt. His face flamed as those rankling memories returned, as he relived that evening in the Hotel Mediterraneo, as he felt Matt's fist slam into his face. And Mark heard him groan.

Two lonely souls, yearning to help but too scared to be helped.

What with that and the unfamiliarly hard ground, neither slept well. They breakfasted thoughtfully in the morning sun, almost in silence. When they had finished, Mark intrigued Don by bringing out his wash-bag and a small bowl, into which he tipped the remains of the coffee water, and by lathering his face.

"Don't mind me staring," Don said. "I've never seen anyone shaving before. Not even my father. I'm just curious."

Which was true. But he suddenly wanted to feel Mark's face, before and after. Was his old randy self beginning to stir again?

"No problem." Mark peered into a little mirror as he plied the razor. "It's a right waste of time. Don't start before you have to." He eyed the fine down on Don's cheeks and lip. Only a month ago he'd have been in a frenzy of desire, but all his yearnings were moribund. "How old are you?"

"Fifteen last March. And you?"

"Sixteen next September." Only six months between them, but it looked more like two years.

"Do you shave every day?"

"Usually. Unless I'm going to be by myself. I don't bother then."

When Mark was done, they strolled to the site, in shorts today rather than jeans. Yesterday they had lowered the bottom of their trench by only three inches. Now, in the light of experience and with permission to take off thicker slices, they made faster progress. They talked again, on rather more personal matters now - likes and dislikes, musical tastes, films, telly programmes. An opening came when they could have discussed parents. Neither took it.

By lunchtime they had gone down another nine inches and needed stepladders to climb in and out without the edge of the trench crumbling. Hitherto the walls of the room had been bare stone and mortar with only traces of the original plaster. Now intact plaster was beginning to appear, painted a dark terracotta colour which was probably deepened by the wetness and the silt.

"Much the same as in the reception area," said Bob, peering down from above. "Don't expect there'll be any decoration on it. After all, this wasn't a four-star establishment, only a one-star. If that. Plain, not plush. You'll have gathered," he said to Mark, "that we haven't had any mosaics yet. Not even simple tessellated floors, anywhere. It all hangs together."

But still there had been no small finds, only the occasional sign of successive floods, and Bob now passed down a thin steel rod. "Try probing," he said. "It'll be useful to know how far down the floor is. To encourage you. Or discourage you. What's that? Still another two feet to go? Hmmm. That'll take you down about five feet all told. Glad you've got those walls round you. If it had been plain mud we'd have had to shore it up. But I'll find something to slot in outside the doorway, to keep the stuff in the courtyard from caving in on you."

Soon after lunch Miss Dinsdale, the old bird who had found the phallic knife in the shop, found something else there, this time made of bronze. Like Mr Wilmot, she washed it, gave it a gentle brush, and let out a shrill shriek of delight.

"Better than fish sauce! I've done it again!"

Again people crowded round, and there was much laughter. It was a charm, a fascinum, a miniature phallus, erect, beautifully made, and adorned not only with balls but with wings and with a ring for suspension. Not identical to the one at Sexi, Don saw at a quick glance, but near enough. Again his heart shrivelled, and again he jumped into their trench to escape public gaze. Again, a few minutes later, Mark joined him. Half smiling, this time - something quite unusual for him.

"That's a sexy souvenir!" he said, and was gobsmacked to see Don's face crumple before it disappeared behind his filthy hands. Mark could not imagine why. Surely Don was not a prude, to be upset by a model prick which delighted even the old ladies. After all, he had been amused by the phallic knife. Yet there was some hang-up there. Some very raw nerve was being touched. The symptoms were all too familiar. Again, he put an arm round him.

"Don, I've put my foot in it, haven't I? Somehow."

"Not your fault," was all Don could manage.

"Please tell me how, so I don't do it again."

But Don couldn't. "Just me being silly. Been reminded again, of something bad. Don't bother about me. Better soon. But thanks."

He was better soon, but Mark did bother. Hitherto he had sympathised with Don as a fellow-human in distress. He had regarded him as a potential friend, as an actual friend, because intellectually they clicked. Now that he had hugged him again, he began to think about him physically too. He had not thought that way about anyone since ... then. It was not a matter of raging desire. Not by a long chalk. It was merely the first recognition that Don had a body, a good young body, as well as a good mature mind. Part of Mark's brain, whichever part it was that dealt with such things, had been knocked out cold and was just beginning to come round.

It took half an hour for Don to start talking again. This time they compared notes about school. Despite the six months' age difference, they were in the same year. They discussed subjects and teachers and uniforms and school dinners, but when talk began to veer towards friends, neither pursued it.

School led them on, via games, to football. Don was a Man U fan and waxed lyrical about his team.

"Did you see them playing the Gunners last March? That goal of Becks'? Shot from outside the penalty area, so fast that Seaman hardly saw it? Wow! People say Beckham's a spoilt brat, and maybe they're right. But, God, he's a star!"

Mark tried to disguise the shock by lowering his head and scraping furiously. In vain. Don saw it, and was dismayed. What had he said? Why on earth should praise of the best-known, arguably the best, footballer in the world put Mark in a tizz? But it had done. In his turn he laid a comforting arm across Mark's back, his hand feeling ripples in the muscle behind the shoulder. He found time for surprise, amid the concern which dominated his mind, at noticing a detail like that.

"I'm sorry, Mark. I've done it too, haven't I? Dunno what it was but, whatever it was, I didn't mean to."

Mark raised a scarlet face and made an attempt at a smile. "I know you didn't. It's just me."

He knew all about David Beckham, of course. Who didn't? But in his private world there was only one Beckham. Roy Beckham. A spoilt brat, yes. But not a star. Quite the reverse. A total bastard.

But he had to be as honest as he could. He sat back on his heels and looked Don in the eyes. "Don, it's something I have to live with." If I'm going to live at all, he added to himself. "Just as I reckon you have to live with your problem, whatever it is."

Don looked back and nodded soberly. "I know. But it helps, somehow, to know you're not the only one."

He was right. It did. No way could either unload their shameful secret. But it did help to know they were not alone in having one. It was something else that drew them closer. After a while they shrugged ruefully, and carried on scraping in silence. But during that interval Mark had come to a very important decision. A double decision.

Nothing else remarkable happened, and by five o'clock they had gone down another foot and cleared the whole room down to the bottom of another layer of grit. Like all the others, this one was flat as a pancake, except that, in the surface of the silt beneath it, were four slight indentations forming a large rectangle, as if left by pebbles plopping into soft mud. Between them was a random pattern of wider depressions. They didn't understand them. Nor did Bob, but he took photographs and they plotted them for the plan.

The sump was now down to the floor which felt, under the water, like smooth cement. Only one more foot to go.

"Ah well," said Bob. "At least the end's in sight. You've got the patience of saints, you two, plodding on through this boring old silt. I do appreciate what you're doing, even if you don't."

They were both in need of praise and encouragement, he felt. Don was familiar enough with the slog of unproductive labour, but he obviously had something on his mind and was far from his usual ebullient self. Mark was the quiet but co-operative new boy, still something of an unknown quantity but coping stoically with an uninspiring job. Perhaps he should have started him on a less tedious one. But they did seem to get on well together.

"Only hope your patience is rewarded with something good when you get down to the floor."

So did they.

"Does Bob tell the local press about his finds?" asked Mark on the way back.

"Not till the end of the season. If the public heard about the altar and Maponus and things, we'd get swamped with visitors. Bob doesn't want them. There's not enough space for them to park on the Fosse Way, and it wastes so much time showing them round. Private visitors are OK, like our parents, say. But not the public. Though we do have an open day on the last day of the dig. That is advertised, and Mr Dring allows parking in our field, and we charge an entrance fee to help cover costs, and everyone acts as guides."

"D'you know, I reckon I'll still be here then."

"What do you mean? Was it in doubt?"

"I'm only sort of booked in for one week. To see if I was interested enough to stay on for the other two."

"So you are interested enough now?"

"Yes, I am. I must be catching the bug."

"Good. I'm glad." That was an understatement. A very big one.

What Mark had said was true - he already felt the thrill of the chase, even though his part in it was still humdrum. But there were two other things he could not reveal, his twin thoughts of the afternoon.

One was that he was beginning to be interested in Don as well. He could do without those unnerving reminders of what he had hoped to escape. But now there was this positive weight in the scales, helping to counterbalance them. No, two positive weights. There was the archaeology, and there was Don. He liked him even more than yesterday, there was now this hint of physical interest, and they had this common bond, this fellow-feeling for each other.

He cast his mind back. What had he done to spark off Don's grief this afternoon? Yes, they'd been looking at Miss Dinsdale's little prick, and he'd said something about a sexy souvenir. Did that mean Don's hang-up was a sexual one? Like his own? If it was, it was something to be ultra-careful about. He didn't trust himself in the least. Even less in that department than in any other. But, if it was, it somehow brought them closer still.

It was Don, therefore, who had spiced the archaeology with a stimulating extra savour, who had made him decide to stay on the dig.

His other decision was much more fundamental. It was Don who had made him decide to stay on in this world.

Don, quite unwittingly, had shown him that he was not alone. Don's friendliness, together with Bob's, had shown him that the world was not, after all, totally black and hostile. He'd been yearning for someone with whom to share trust, understanding, care, fulfilment, fun. Don had already supplied more than a touch of understanding and care. There was therefore hope of finding the rest, somewhere. Yes, he'd stay on and try to unravel the knot of his problems, in hope. Rather than throw the whole tangle under a train, in despair.

The evening passed quietly and companionably, and they slept much better. Except for one short interlude which affected only Don. He was just dropping off when he heard a soft scratching noise, intermittent but persistent. It seemed to be coming from under his pillow. He found his torch and lifted the pillow. Nothing there. He pulled back the loose end of the groundsheet. There in the flattened grass, staring at him with large unblinking eyes, was a field mouse. After last night he had rearranged his sleeping bag, and presumably the weight of his pillow, or of his head on the pillow, had now blocked the mouse's front door.

For fully half a minute the two looked at each other, before Don smiled and whispered "Sorry!" At that the mouse turned and scampered off, not in panic, but stopping from time to time to sniff. Don replaced the groundsheet and moved his sleeping bag to one side, but the mouse must have had a back door to its burrow, for he never heard it again.

He settled down once more, thinking about it. The mouse had probably never set eyes on a human before, certainly not so close and by torchlight. But surely instinct told it that something so big and strange was a potential threat. Yet it had conquered its fear, and trusted him.

Was there a message there? That what seem to be big threats are not necessarily threats at all? All very well. But once you have been let down, it is much harder to whistle up the trust next time round. Probably that mouse had never been let down. If it had been, like as not it would have paid for it with its life.

So the message might be very different. That once you know the dangers, self-preservation must come first. Never put yourself at someone else's mercy, unless you have a cast-iron reason to trust them. And to have that, you must trust yourself to trust them.

 

Chapter 5. Monday: love is the fart

If when Don Cupid's dart
Doth wound a heart,
We hide our grief
And shun relief;
The pain increaseth on that score,
For wounds unsearched but rankle more.

When this I do descry,
Then thus think I: Love is the fart
Of every heart;
It pains a man when 'tis kept close,
And others do offend when 'tis let loose.

Sir John Suckling, Love's Offence

Monday morning was uneventful too, until almost lunchtime. The stink of ancient mud was stronger still. Each worked along a side wall, scraping away a strip a yard wide and three inches deep, starting from the courtyard end. As Mark was approaching the corner by the window wall he was startled out of his mechanical scraping. Something was different. There was a different sort of resistance. Delicately he scratched at the silt with the trowel point and gently prodded with his finger.

"Don! There's something here!"

"Hang on a mo. I've got something too."

After a bit more poking in his own corner, Don came over to Mark's and poked there.

"Yes, yours is much the same. Want to have a look at mine?"

For the first time for weeks, Mark grinned properly. He could not have done that even yesterday, and it was an unpractised grin. But for the first time Don saw a face without strain, and those hazel eyes without shutters. He felt strangely confused and could only half-smile back. "Gutter mind!" was all he could say.

So Mark looked at Don's, and then at Don. They knew they were on to something good. Don stood up, not much more than his head above the trench. He located Bob, waved to attract his attention, and beckoned him over.

"Looks like cloth, Bob. Two lots. And one seems to have some leather too. You'd better come down."

Bob lumbered down the ladder and lowered his bulk protestingly on to a kneeler. "I'm too fat for this game!" He peered closely. "Ye gods and little fishes! You're right! Good grief!" He felt with a finger, sat back on his heels, and thought. "Look, it's lunchtime. You go and wash your hands and grab some sandwiches while I have a look at the other one and have a ferret." He saw their faces fall, and smiled. "It's all right, I'm not going to steal them off you. They're your find, and you stay with them. But this could be big-time stuff, and I've got to work out how best we tackle it."

They obeyed, and came back with their sandwiches to a council of war.

"Phew," said Bob. "Can't think how you work down here, in this pong. Right, this is the way I see it. We've got leather and what looks like lots of textiles. They're almost certainly Roman. Leather's not uncommon in wet conditions. But cloth is rare. If you find it at all it's normally only in tiny bits. In the western provinces, anyway. It can survive if it's been kept totally dry - most of the Roman cloth that we do have comes from the Egyptian desert. But it can also survive if it's been kept totally wet, without any oxygen, and undisturbed. Like here. For maybe sixteen hundred years this stuff's been sealed in this repulsive goo. Perfect anaerobic conditions.

"Problem is that we're now exposing it to air. We've got to act fast, one way or the other. But it's delicate stuff, only to be handled by experts ... Look, both of you stay in your own corners. What I want to see is if we can take each lot out in a solid block, without disturbing it. Slide a metal sheet under it, and lift it bodily for them to untangle and clean up and conserve in the lab. But we can only do that if it's small enough.

"So your first job is to get the mud off round it, down to the floor. Don't disturb the stuff itself at all, don't try to clean it. It'll be pretty fragile. Simply discover how far it extends. If it proves too big, we turn the pump off and let it flood again while we scratch our heads. So be very very careful, but don't waste time."

"OK."

"And boys. I don't want to put you off. Or raise false hopes. But if this is what I think it might be, it's a very important find indeed. You're dealing with it not only because you found it, but also because you're the most meticulous and dextrous people we've got. It's all in your hands."

An accolade. And a challenge. Both boys glowed, and rose to it. They discussed details and collected more equipment. The site hut was a junk shop of everyday things which archaeologists press into unexpected service. Tablespoons - blunter than trowels and better for scooping. Big sponges to mop up residual water - most of it was intercepted by the sump as it came in from the courtyard, but not all. More buckets to store the mud they scooped out, until they had time to sieve it - they would now have to sieve the lot. They experimented with positions. The work was low down and getting lower, their eyes needed to be close to it, and squatting and kneeling both proved awkward.

"Best to lie down," said Mark, eyeing the claggy mud with distaste. "OK if we strip off?" he asked Bob.

Bob chuckled. "OK by me. You'll get a crowd of old ladies admiring you, though."

Mark blushed. "I didn't mean strip right off."

"No. But you'll still get a fan-club."

So Mark stripped to his briefs, after a moment's hesitation Don did too, and they lay full-length on the cold and clammy mud as they scooped. Sure enough, an audience appeared and compliments rained down. "Heehee! A nudist colony!" said Miss Dinsdale's voice. From above, nobody saw Don's face turn scarlet; but Mark, on the same level, did. Before long, Bob shooed everyone else back to work.

Three hours of careful spooning around each corner took them down to the floor which, as in the doorway, proved to be smooth cement covered with another layer of grit. They had now discovered that in both cases the textiles were in a sort of mound roughly eighteen inches across and nine inches high. Bob was much relieved. He came down to take photographs.

Then, while the boys measured and sketched the mounds for the record, he collected his equipment. He had some deep plastic trays two feet square, and he had some thin steel sheets he had salvaged from a skip. He sheared two sheets to fit the trays. The rest was surprisingly easy. Both boys now worked together, one easing his outspread fingers under a mound, the other sliding the sheet in under the fingers as the mound was freed from the floor. They then lifted the sheet and mound together and lowered them into the tray, and repeated the performance on the other mound.

They heaved the trays to the surface and regarded them in triumph. From what they could see through the adhering silt, each mound consisted mainly of folded cloth, compressed tight by the weight above and black from centuries in wet mud. But toes of shoes and other bits of leather were poking out of the sides, and on top of Mark's mound was what looked like a sheath for a small knife.

"Bob, I think I know what you thought they might be," said Mark cryptically. "And if I'm right, I think you're right." Bob cocked an eyebrow at him. "It's a bedroom, big enough for a double bed. I think the last people in that bed got flooded out. They escaped, but had to leave their clothes behind. If that's right, we've got two complete sets of Roman British clothes."

Bob merely smiled. "Cross fingers," was all he said.

He covered the mounds with clean tea-towels requisitioned from Mrs P, and packed wet moss from the stream bank on top and all round. He watered them liberally and put them in bin-liners to stop them drying out. Meanwhile the boys resumed their wellies, sieved the contents of their buckets, refuelled the pump, and tidied away their equipment. Then they carried the trays to Bob's car. Everyone else had long since left.

"I've been on the phone while you were slaving down there. To Bradford. That's much the best lab for textiles. And I've arranged to drive the stuff up there first thing tomorrow. So clear the rest of the room, would you? I doubt you'll find any more textiles. Rather hope you don't! If I'm back in time, I'll drop in here at the end of the day. And boys, thank you. You've been blinking magnificent!"

He beamed at them with genuine gratitude, and with affectionate amusement at the sight of two slender and elated figures, standing in the evening sunshine on the verge of a Roman road, wearing nothing whatever except briefs, wellies, and much mud.

Mark's an acquisition, he thought as he drove off. He'd long known that Don was utterly reliable. Now it looked as if Mark, quieter and less experienced but just as bright, was the same: ready to do not only mind-blowingly tedious chores in foul conditions without complaint, but also highly responsible ones with intelligence and infinite care. He devoutly hoped Mark would stay with them. He only had daughters himself. No offence to them, but he wished he had sons as well. Like these two boys.

These two boys wandered slowly back to the camping field, still on a high, grinning openly at each other for the first time, sharing their delight. This afternoon had deepened their bond. At the time they had been too intent on their work but, looking back, they recognised it now. When they had climbed the stile, Mark unthinkingly put a comradely arm round Don's shoulder. Bare skin on bare skin, for the first time.

"Today's been great, Don. Thanks."

Don was thinking the same. Though he was reminded of Matt's arm on his shoulder on the Costa Natura, his own went round Mark in acknowledgement. The contact felt good and, as they waded side by side through the long grass at the edge of the wheat-field, their legs were sensuously tickled. He glanced down and found his eye dwelling on the mud-matted trail of hair below Mark's navel.

He became conscious of a tightening in his briefs, and his contentment evaporated. Oh God, he couldn't allow that to happen. No way. It might lead to a replay of Estepona. Reluctantly he took his arm off Mark and wondered vaguely why he'd never felt the grass tickling his crotch before. Oh, of course ...

"Bugger it! We've left our clothes behind!"

"Ackkk, so we have! Leave them till after we've eaten. And washed. This mud's drying out and it's getting uncomfortable."

"I think there's a hose-pipe in the barn. Might be better than sluicing in the trough."

Yes, there was. Mark fixed it to the tap, turned it on, and found that a finger over the end produced a spray of a sort.

"Right, you first." He didn't know if he dared drop his briefs, and was passing the buck.

Don could not trust himself either. As it happened, the coldness of the water discouraged things from misbehaving further and, as Mark moved round his body with the spray, he relaxed and scrubbed himself vigorously with his flannel. Then he towelled himself, nipped into his tent to change into clean and dry clothes, and took over the hose.

Mark had had quite a close-up view of Don's smooth body as he hosed it, and had felt stirrings in his own briefs. Now, as the spray moved down to his own legs, he saw Don's eyes fixed on his crotch. Oh Gawd, surely not? But a glance showed that things were properly limp again. So is he checking me out? How do I deal with this?

Don seemed to read his mind. "It's OK, I'm not checking you out. But is that a wart on your thigh?"

On the inside, just below the bulge of the briefs, was a dark knob the size of a small pea. Don had not noticed it when he had surreptitiously checked him out in the trench.

"What? I haven't got a wart. Where?"

Don turned the hose away and pointed, without venturing too close.

Mark pushed his bulge to one side and peered down. "Eeeewww! It's a tick!"

"Don't try and pull it off. It'll only leave its head behind. Look, let's finish swilling you off. There's only your legs left."

That done, Mark stood drying himself, hair first, his head hidden in the towel. Don knelt down to inspect the tick more closely. This was almost a replay of that time in the Hotel Mediterraneo, though Mark wasn't naked as Matt had been. Nor stiff. He yearned to do what he hadn't been allowed to do then. But of course he couldn't. Matt had been all right, up to that point, but Mark was on a different plane. He knew that already. And he still had no reason to suppose that Mark was gay.

"You must have picked it up in that long grass. But I know how to get rid of it. We need that meths for your stove. Where do I find the bottle?" He had once had a tick himself, and this was how Mum had dealt with it.

"In the cardboard box."

Don found it and handed it over. Mark had finished drying himself.

"Sit down and drip the stuff on. One drip at a time, and wait for that to evaporate before the next drip. As it evaporates, it cools, and the critter won't like that."

Mark sat, legs provocatively wide apart, in nothing but his filthy wet briefs, and dripped. Don wanted to do it for him, to rest his hand on Mark's thigh with its fine dark hair, or even on his bulge. But of course he couldn't. Within a few minutes the tick decided it was too chilly and fell off. Don put a toe on it, and Mark's blood squidged over the grass. Now Don wanted to suck the bite, as one does a snakebite. Ticks carry infections. Lyme disease. Typhus. Suck any germs out. But of course he couldn't.

Mark dressed, they cooked and ate, and went back to collect their clothes. Once again they stopped beyond the stile and looked down at the site.

"I don't understand that flood," said Don. "When it went down, why didn't they just shovel the muck out, clean up, and go back to business as usual?"

"I've been wondering that too, and think I've worked it out. Yes, they would have done, if it had been a flood which came and went. But this one came but didn't go. The water level stayed up. Permanently. It must have done - we've got two piles of Roman clothes, which must have been wet ever since, or they'd have decayed."

Don's eyes had lit up. "I think I see where you're going. Carry on."

"Somehow the stream got dammed. Well, they'd hardly dam it on purpose, so it must have been by accident. A landslide sort of thing. And look." He pointed to the far side of the valley. "It's steep there. And there's that big sort of gouge in the hillside, with bedrock sticking out. And right underneath it the stream suddenly drops down. At that waterfall place, just below the hostel. Is that where the trouble started? A big bit of hillside slipped down and blocked the stream, and everything upstream of there's been filled up with mud and water ever since, getting deeper and deeper. One landslide after another. New floods."

Don was excited. "Yes! You've got it! It makes sense. A local cloudburst which caused the landslide. And caused a flash flood. Which brought down all that silt and dumped it in the hostel."

"That's right. Something just like that happened near us, in the Chew Valley, thirty-odd years ago. Dad told me about it. Six inches of rain in a couple of hours, or something ridiculous. Did a hell of a lot of damage."

"So the people in the hostel got out, but in such a hurry they left their clothes behind. And because the landslide was too big to shift, the hostel was abandoned for good. The temple and the other buildings were OK, because they stand higher. So does the reception area in the hostel. But hang on. If the clothes were there, why isn't the bed?"

"Because the management salvaged the furniture. Anything that was still visible above the silt, once it had settled. Beds. Doors and things. That last layer of grit, which was dumped by the next flood - that was a foot above the floor, wasn't it?"

"About."

"So the first flood buried those clothes under a foot of mud. Not surprising nobody salvaged them. Even if they knew they were there."

"Yes. Yes. And Mark! Those indentations! The four in a rectangle - were they left by the bed legs? If a bed's stuck in a foot of mud you can't drag it out lengthways. You've got to lift it up. So the other depressions in between could be the footprints of the blokes carrying it. The mud was only semi-hard then, and they sank in a bit with the weight of the bed, and then the mud sort of slumped into their footprints. And into the holes left by the bed legs. I've think you've got it, Mark. We'll check the dimensions on the plan."

They grinned at each other again, in delight at having deduced the fate of a bed sixteen hundred years ago. But Don had not finished.

"And hey, something else I've only just realised. About the last people in that bed. There was a sheath for a knife on top of your pile of clothes, right? Well, I'm pretty sure there was the tip of a sheath sticking out of mine."

"So?"

"Women wouldn't carry knives."

Their minds swung to Maponus, uniter of young men, and visualised what the last people in that bed might have been doing. But they did not dare spell out their images. Nor did they dare look at each other.

"Well, we'd better get our clothes." The light was fading. "Where are they?"

"Bob said he'd put them in the hut."

It was locked, of course, but everybody knew where the key was hidden. While they were there they checked their field notes for the indentations.

"Yes. That's it. About six foot long and four foot six wide. Up against the wall under the window, centrally. They must be the marks of the bed legs. Wheeee! Let's go."

"Hang on," said Mark, "I've got a stone in my trainer," and sat down on the tall stool to deal with it.

The sight of Mark sitting on the stool jostled with an image already in Don's mind - an image of what the occupants of the bed might have been up to. They coalesced to put him in a mood that he had not been in since half term. The randy Don was already part-way to rejoining the serious-minded Don. Now a bit of the mischievous Don came back too. He giggled.

"What's so funny?"

"Just being weird. Reminded of a joke."

"Let's hear it, then."

Don hesitated, not at all sure how Mark might react and wishing he had not giggled. But he took the risk. "Um, how do you get four gay men sitting on one stool?"

Mark gaped at him, taken aback. "How?"

"Turn it upside down!"

Apart from that brief whimsy in the trench this morning, it was a long time since Mark had seen anything funny in any aspect of gayness. On the verge of resentment, he gaped for several more seconds before doubling up and bellowing with laughter, helplessly, on and on. Don was astonished, then worried. He seemed way out of control. How do you deal with hysterics? Slap him in the face?

To his relief Mark pulled himself together and wiped tears off his cheeks.

"Sorry. Got carried away. Eh dear."

They picked up their clothes and locked up. On the way back, Don took another risk.

"Mark, can I ask you something? Why did you nearly bust your guts over that joke? It wasn't that funny."

Mark's answer took a long time to come, because he had to screw up courage to admit even this much. "Because ... today's the first time I've been really happy for months. And that was the first excuse I've had for a good laugh. I'm out of practice, that's all."

"You've been unhappy because of ... whatever it was? That bad thing you have to live with?"

Mark nodded, slightly and slowly.

Don took an even bigger risk. "Want to tell me? Get it off your chest?"

There was a longer pause. "Thanks, but no. You'd laugh at me."

"I wouldn't."

"Everybody else has."

"Mark, you can trust me."

Mark gazed at him for a long time. "But can I trust myself? Look at it this way. You've got, um, bad memories too. I know you have."

Don nodded reluctantly. He could see what was coming.

"Like to tell me about them?"

Could he summon up enough trust? No. Once bitten, twice shy. He dared not risk being let down again. He shook his head.

"See?" Mark managed to muster a wry smile. "I can't show you mine. And you can't show me yours."

They had stopped and were facing each other in the dusk, in the long grass beside the golden wheat-field. Each of them was already in love. Not fully aware of it yet, and totally unaware that the other was too. With no real inkling, in fact, that the other was gay. Desperately wanting to help, but not allowed to. Desperately wanting to be helped, but not allowing it. Convinced that if that festering, shameful, can of worms were opened it would bring down revulsion or ridicule or even hatred. To open that can would destroy their friendship, a friendship that was new but already immensely valuable.

It hurt to keep the can closed, it hurt like hell. Hide the grief and the pain increases. But that was the only way. So they thought.

They were so near, but yet so far. And they did not know it.

 

Chapter 6. Tuesday: to feel the chain

O! dreadful is the check - intense the agony -
When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see;
When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again;
The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain.

Emily Bronte, The Prisoner

Next day, Bob having gone to Bradford, Christine was in charge. She agreed that, because they knew there was no stratigraphy, they should clear the mud along the window wall right down to the floor, working towards each other from the corners where the clothes had been. They scraped very carefully, and sieved their silt, and there were no more textiles. But on the floor they did make four discoveries.

First, just on his side of where the bed had been, the right-hand side as you looked at the window, Mark found two things close together. There was a small earthenware oil lamp complete with its wick, and alongside it was a knife. Its four-inch blade was badly corroded, but its plain wooden handle seemed intact. Don told him in detail what to do, but left the actual work entirely to him and sat back to watch him do it.

But he was distracted by Mark's body. He was kneeling with his back to him, bent double, and not much skin was visible. The wellies hid his calves. But the hair stood dark on the side of his thighs, and a gap between tee shirt and shorts exposed a strip below his waist and the knobbles of his spine. His shorts were stretched provocatively tight over his buttocks and into his crack. Don found himself getting hard, and forced his attention back to what Mark was doing.

He had now recorded the position of the finds and was delicately washing the dirt off the top with a small paintbrush and water. With a hiss of his breath he saw an inscription cut into the knife handle, laid bare before his eyes, laid bare by his own hands. He felt an intense glow of ownership.

"MAGLOCVNI," read Don, venturing close to look. "'The property of Maglocunus.' Wheeee! Another British name! I suppose this belonged to the sheath on your pile."

They summoned Christine to take photographs. That done, Mark did not attempt to turn the knife over, but cut a sheet of plastic to size and slid it under the knife. An elastic band slipped over each end held it in place. He padded the base of a plastic box with wet cotton wool, laid the sheet and knife on top, and covered it with more wet cotton wool before putting the lid on. The lamp went into a smaller padded box.

"Well done!" said Don. "You did that as if you'd being doing it all your life!"

Mark grinned at him in pure joy. Then Don found a small silver coin up against the wall. He washed it and looked at it closely, rotating it in his fingers.

"Valens. Emperor, um, 364 to 378, I think. It's hardly worn. Can't have been lost much later. Hardly after the 330s, I'd have thought. Reckon that dates our flood fairly closely. Right, I'll get it recorded - where's the tape measure?"

He passed the coin to Mark, who studied it with interest but little comprehension. He had never held a Roman coin before, let alone seen one emerge from the ground.

Finally, as he scraped down through a new area of silt, Don exposed a horizontal circle about eight inches in diameter, of which the quarter up against the wall was missing.

"Pottery," he said gleefully, tapping it with his trowel.

"Why pottery in here?"

"What do you keep under the bed?" Don was grinning wickedly.

Porn mags, thought Mark wildly. My jerk-off rag ... What have they got to do with ... oh, I see! He laughed.

"No, I don't keep one under the bed. I can last the night. It's the rim of a pissius pottius!" He had no Latin at all. "What is the Latin for a pisspot?"

"Um. Ought to know that. It's in Petronius. Yes - matella."

Good grief. Was there anything about the Romans this boy didn't know?

Don dug round it. It was just like a modern one, though unglazed, and the missing quarter of the rim was there inside it. They reckoned the flood rushing in had dashed it against the wall and broken it.

"Pity. It can't have been very full or it wouldn't have moved. A potful of Roman piss would have given the scientists a field day!"

Christine came down to take more photographs before they lifted it and packed it up. Working towards each other, they were now close together, chatting desultorily. Nothing more natural than to look at the other while he was talking. A bit disconcerting, when you looked away, to find you were breathing more heavily than usual. To find yourself wondering about him, again. He's never mentioned girlfriends. But then he's never said anything about friends of any sort. Can he have lost them all, like you? Like you ... like you ... can he conceivably be the same as you? No answer possible. Only an ache of longing, of the sort you thought had been battered out of you. A longing not for quick fun, but for something way beyond that.

That finished their yard-wide strip. Rather than start on a new one, they decided to spend what little was left of the day on cleaning the plaster on the window wall, which they'd paid no attention to so far. All they needed was a bucket of clean water and a paintbrush apiece to wash off the mud. The plaster was mostly in good condition. This time, to share the bucket, they started in the middle and worked outwards. They immediately exposed a long horizontal line, fifteen inches above the floor, where the plaster had been dented and chipped. It was about four foot six long, central under the window.

"Made by the bed, surely," Don observed, "whenever it was pushed up against the wall. Or when it shook, if the people in it were, um, being energetic. Fits the leg marks, doesn't it? Not much doubt now."

At that point Christine looked down at them. "You're out of touch, deep in your burrow, aren't you? You know it's after five? Everyone else has gone. I'm going. But stay on if you want to finish your plaster, so long as you lock up."

"Yes, we'd like to finish. And we'll lock up. Bye!"

At the very next stroke of his brush, a foot above bed level, Mark let out a yelp, flabbergasted and jubilant.

"Don! There's writing!"

It was a graffito, scratched through the terracotta paint into the plaster beneath. A few letters were exposed. Don rushed across and watched open-mouthed as Mark carefully washed the mud off the rest, five lines of it. To him it was total gibberish, and Don groaned as it emerged.

"Oh shit! It's in cursive. Handwriting. Almost as different from capitals as ours is. Same sort of thing as you get on the defixiones. Well, I'll have a go."

He set to, copying it letter by letter on to a pad, then transcribing it letter by letter into capitals, and when he had finished he read it through several times.

"Oh my God," he said slowly. "Oh my God." He looked at Mark with an odd mixture of elation and hesitation.

"Well, come on!" Mark had been nobly fighting back his impatience. "What does it say?"

Don handed over the pad. "Actually, it was easier than I expected" The capitals read

HIC MAGLOCVNVS ET DVMNORIX
MAPONI ADPROBATIONE
IN AMORE CONIVNCTI
ET CATENA COMPVNCTI
FVTVERVNT ET IRRVMAV---------

The last line ended in a long diagonal gouge.

"That doesn't help much, though I can see Maglocunus there, like on the knife. And Maponus."

Don breathed deeply. He had to tread very carefully. "Mark, it's ... sexual. Explicit. Rather like graffiti in shithouses nowadays. Do you mind?"

In this white heat of discovery, shamefaced memories of writing graffiti in the Gents at the youth club melted for once into unimportance.

"I've been in shithouses too! Come on!"

"OK. Well, in shithouse language it says 'Here Maglocunus and Dumnorix, united in love with Maponus' approval and somethinged with a chain, fucked and sucked'."

"Christ! Christ! So Maponus was the uniter of young men! They had to get his permission!" A sudden qualm struck him. "Those are both boys' names, are they?"

"Oh yes."

Mark was looking speculatively at the graffito and at the floor.

"And this is plumb above where Maglocunus' knife was. Don! Look! They were both lying here. They'd just finished ... you know. Maglocunus was on this side of the bed, lying on his front, and he was right-handed. He got his knife from his pile of clothes - he could easily reach it." Mark was acting it out. "The lamp was on the floor just below. He scratched this message. But in the middle of that last word he got the fright of his life. Thunder and lightning? The landslide coming down? Or the water bursting in? And he dropped the knife and ran. So did what's-his-name - Dumnorix. Both starkers. And they never came back. Christ!"

For once Don had nothing to add. But it did not escape him that Mark had concentrated on Maponus and on reconstructing the scene with vivid imagination - that he had taken in his stride what Maglocunus and Dumnorix had been up to. They squatted there in the filth, both encouraged in their lonely quandaries. At least, this time, they did look at each other, while still inscrutably hugging their thoughts to themselves.

"What was that bit in the middle?" Mark asked at last. "Somethinged with a chain? Does that mean ... um ... bondage?"

"I don't think so. It doesn't say bound with a chain. It says catena compuncti. I don't understand it. Catena's a chain. Compuncti ought to mean pricked pricked or punctured. Like compunction, when your conscience pricks you. But pricked with a chain? It doesn't make sense."

"No. It doesn't."

"Well." Don shrugged his shoulders. "Shall we finish the wall and call it a day?"

Mark bent double again to brush the base of the wall. His waistband was loose and now sagged low, revealing almost a builder's bum. At the base of his spine was a small blue star. Don found himself at first strangely envious, and then suddenly inspired.

"You've got a tattoo!" he exclaimed.

Mark looked up, blushing. "Just my bit of rebellion. Where nobody's supposed to see it. So what?"

"Tattoos are pricked, aren't they? With a needle and dye. Were our blokes tattooed with a chain, like you are with a star?"

Mark sat back on his heels to consider it. "Well, it makes better sense. They knew about tattooing then?"

"Oh yes. The Picts were tattooed, in Scotland. That's why the Romans called them Picts, the painted people. And slaves were sometimes tattooed with their owner's name."

"Slaves might be in chains. Can that be a link? Oops, sorry, pun not intended. Were these guys in slavery to Maponus? In slavery to love? Or else ... was the chain a link between two lovers?"

"Could be either way. Tattooing was only a thought, anyway. Let's finish the wall. Shouldn't take long."

It didn't. They found nothing else. The filled up the pump, and as they were putting away their tools they were surprised to see Bob, coming from the direction of the camping field.

"You still here? I expected to find you having supper. What's kept you so late? It's nearly seven!"

"We've been clearing down to the floor along the window wall, and cleaning the plaster above it. We've found ... some rather interesting things. And we've been doing some reconstructing of what happened in the flood."

Bob, of course, demanded details, and they took him into the hut and showed him their finds, which delighted him. "Now come and look at the trench."

"I'm not going down there. I'm in my tidy clothes!"

"You needn't go down. Just look. Mark, you hop down and point things out. You found most of them."

Mark climbed down the ladder. "Right, piles of clothes here and here. Bed here, double bed. Those marks yesterday were where it was lifted out of the mud, here, here, here and here. The head of the bed wore this mark on the plaster. The coin was here, the chamber pot here, the lamp and knife here. And immediately above the knife is a graffito, here. Over to you, Don."

Don handed Bob his pad. "It's in cursive, but I've turned it into capitals. I'm pretty sure of it all."

"Hmph. You know the state of my Latin. Oh! There's Maglocunus, as on the knife. And Maponus. What does it mean?"

In the past, Don and Bob had discussed all kinds of topics, but never anything like this.

"Bob, it's ... obscene. Like you might find in a public convenience."

Bob looked at him steadily. "I see. Don, I'm not easily shocked. But the last thing I want is to embarrass you. Or Mark. After all, it's not a subject which geriatrics are expected to discuss with young men."

Mark was fascinated. Here were two highly intelligent people, of wildly different ages, with a deep respect for each other, a deep trust in each other, considerate of each other's sensibilities, searching for common ground which would offend nobody. He thought he could help.

"Bob, we're old enough to know what's what. We're not far off the age of consent. If you're not going to be embarrassed, neither are we. Well, I'm not."

He thought the world of Don, but when talking to him it was still difficult to trust himself. The ice felt so thin. He thought the world of Bob too, and in that direction the ice somehow felt much thicker and safer.

"Nor me," Don confirmed.

"Well, I'm glad to hear that, really, because I've got something of the same sort which I'd like to show you. Right, go ahead, then."

"But it might embarrass you in ... the vernacular," Don warned him. "So I'll use, er, clinical language. OK?"

"Understood."

"Well, it says 'Here Maglocunus and Dumnorix, united in love with Maponus' approval and tattooed - we think - with a chain, copulated and, er, performed fellatio.' But the last word, irrumaverunt, stops short in this wild scratch."

Bob nodded slowly. "I see," he said again. "Thank you. Thank you very much, both of you. It's all tying together. Now, on the practical side, we need to get that graffito off the wall and into the museum before it gets damaged. I'll whistle up the plaster expert from Bath as soon as possible. Meanwhile, it's getting late, you're filthy, and we've still got lots to talk about. Look, what I suggest is this. I drive into Chipping Sodbury for fish and chips for the three of us, and bring them back to eat by your tents. I'll be about half an hour. How does that hit you?"

"Sounds good to us."

So Bob went, and they locked up and rapidly and modestly deployed the hose-pipe. By the time Bob returned they were ready.

"Right," said Bob through a mouthful of chips. "You said you'd been doing some reconstructing. Let's hear it."

Mark repeated their vision of what had happened, from the cloudburst to the salvaging of the furniture. Bob listened, nodding approvingly.

"That's superb. Now you put it like that, it all adds up. And it adds a lot to the story of the site. I know a soil mechanics bloke at the university, and I'll drag him out here to get his view on the landslide."

They chewed it over for a bit longer. Then, "How did things go in Bradford?"

"Very smoothly. Sarah Madeley - she's in charge of the lab - was over the moon about the textiles. And highly complimentary of the state they were delivered in."

"How long before they get busy on them?"

"Well, she was so excited that I think we're going to jump the queue, and we might get a very preliminary report in a few days. Which is greased lightning, though the full report will take much longer. But I didn't come over to tell you that.

"I came because when I got home and opened today's post I found Tom Rowson's report on the defixio. He's worked like greased lightning too, though it's a simple job by comparison. He's given it the works. Photograph, drawing, transcription, translation. The translation's the important one. For me, anyway, and for Mark. And this one's in clinical language too. Try to read it with the same, um, detachment that you showed over your graffito. It's the counterpart to it, in a way." He passed a sheet of paper across.

Lossio and Iliomarus asked Maponus for his approval of their union, but because it was asked in lust the god forbade it. None the less they had sexual intercourse and thereby committed sacrilege. May the god therefore shrivel their penises, burst their testicles, and block their anuses.

"Tom thinks it was probably written by a priest and hung up as a public warning. Together with your graffito, it adds a lot to what we know about Nettleton ..."

He hesitated.

"Look. I've been thinking about this and I'm still in a difficulty. Personally, I don't have any problem with what went on here. I would have done, till very recently, but not now. But the point is, are you happy to carry on talking about it? We're on delicate ground, and I want you to understand my position. You're young, and while you're here you're my responsibility. I've just shown you, um, sexual material which I doubt your parents would approve of. If we're going to pursue this, ought we to get clearance from them?"

Both boys suppressed a shudder and consulted each other with their eyes. "We do understand your position, Bob," Don assured him. "But as Mark said, we're old enough to know the score. It isn't as if you were a dirty old man introducing us to things we didn't know about before. Or seducing us. What we're talking about is history, and we've no problem with it either. Or with talking about it to you." Our problem's talking about it to each other, he added to himself.

"In other words, you trust me. And I certainly trust you. Because all this sort of thing boils down to trust, doesn't it? Is that OK with you, Mark? All right then, on that basis, let's carry on, no holds barred. What do we know about Maponus' cult here?"

Mark swallowed the last of his fish. He had at last met a positive attitude to gay love, he was at last giving and receiving genuine trust, and it buoyed him up no end. Don seemed intent on pouring out coffee, so he took the plunge.

"In detail, not much. But in general it seems fairly clear. From this defixio, from the graffito, from that bronze plaque, from the altar to the uniter of young men. Even from the things in the shop.

"This place was about gay sex, yes. But it wasn't just about fu... um, copulation. It was about love. Boyfriends came here to ask Maponus if it was OK to team up. To get his blessing, if you like. He might say no, like in the defixio, if he felt they were asking in lust. Or he might say yes, like with Dumnorix and Maglocunus, if he thought they were in love. Maybe the chain we think they were tattooed with was a sort of mark of his approval, linking them together.

"But there's all sorts of detail we don't know. Like how they asked their question and got their answer."

"Could have been direct to the god, " said Don slowly, "or through the priests, like the oracles in Greek temples. And there were temples with brothels, with boy prostitutes as well as girls. But you're right, this wasn't a brothel, um, licensed by the god. The opposite, almost - Maponus only approved of love, not of casual sex.

"And there are other things we'll probably never know. Like how far away did people come here from? Did it just serve the local area, or further afield? Another thing. We know the god and his priests frowned on gay partners who didn't have his blessing. But we don't know if society did too."

"Well, what was the contemporary attitude to homosexuality?" asked Bob. He had lit his pipe, and was watching the smoke drifting away in the evening air.

"I looked it up not long ago, in Pop's classical dictionary." Don did not say why. "In Rome and Italy, it was totally acceptable with a rent-boy or slave. But not, in theory, with free-born males, though in practice it was common enough - there's plenty about it in Catullus and Petronius and Martial. Though there were rarely long-term partnerships like you get now. But that was in Rome, at the centre of things. Roman Britain was out on the fringe, with a quite different culture underneath the Roman veneer. What happened here I haven't a clue. I've not heard of any evidence at all. Have you?"

Bob shook his head. "No, I haven't. Certainly nothing comparable to Nettleton has yet turned up. Mind you, the Romans ruled with a light hand. They were pretty tolerant of local practices, weren't they? Except when they went too far, like the druids and human sacrifice. They stamped on that. But if this was a British, um, custom, or a purely local one, they might well leave it alone. A few gay yokels wouldn't be any threat to them."

"Mmmm. That graffito wasn't the work of a yokel, Bob. Maglocunus was pretty well educated. His writing's good. So's his spelling."

"But Nettleton wasn't a flashy upper-crust sort of place, Don. Not posh, like Bath. No frills. We're pretty sure of that. It seems to have catered more for the plebs."

"I wonder, Bob. Things like Miss Dinsdale's knife can't have been cheap. That altar must have cost a mint. So must the god's statue. There was money here. But I wonder if the tone of the place, and the decor, was deliberately kept plain and simple. Encouraging modesty in one's love life. Humility, even. No going over the top. No casual sex - that's shallow and lustful. But emphasising love, proper love, deep and honest, that doesn't need frills."

Don spoke with a conviction that surprised even himself. He was not clear what had made him say that. Perhaps it was Mark's point about applying to the god in love. He was more conscious than ever that his cavortings with Matt had been in lust. If only he could somehow exorcise their memory, he would be nearer to reaching out to Mark. Love might be only an arm's length away.

He was already sure, from the way he accepted the goings-on at Nettleton, that Mark was gay-friendly. He was beginning to guess that he was actually gay. But how to make sure about that too, without making a fool of himself again? That was the crunch. After all, he'd guessed that Matt was gay, or rather bi, and had guessed wrong. He could do nothing until he was absolutely sure about Mark. One false move ...

As Mark listened, he understood more and more. He was hardly aware of Bob saying goodnight and driving away. He saw that his fiasco with Chris, and the yearnings that preceded it, had been shallow and lustful. He now saw something deeper and more honest within his reach. It was pretty clear that Don had been through some similar escapade, and the way he talked about lust and love suggested he had learned a similar lesson.

It put Mark in an agony. He now sensed that Don was gay. But he was still not sure. Last time round he had jumped to some idiotic conclusions, and look where they had landed him. This time, he had no idea how to make sure without crude and risky questioning. His pulse, his brain, his soul were athrob and ready to soar free, but his flesh was still shackled by his chains. By his uncertainty about Don. And by his own nightmare memories. What he needed for them - a new metaphor suggested itself - was a massive laxative, so that he could excrete them and flush them away into the sewer of oblivion. But he had no idea how to do that either.

 

Chapter 7. Wednesday: Heaven in Hell's despair

Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.

William Blake, Songs of Experience

On Wednesday the god came home. But it was a long Wednesday before he did. Some time in the small hours, Mark found himself back beside the bed, sliding his hand down through Chris's pubic hair to the grisly discovery beyond. He relived the pain of the shock, the pain of his bitten tongue, the pain of Chris's laughter, the pain of Roy's derision.

"You bastards!" he yelled, and howled his grief.

He was vaguely aware of the tent flap opening and of someone crawling in. He felt a hand on his shoulder and heard a calming voice.

"It's all right, Mark. It's all right. Just wake up, gently. It's all right."

He forced his eyes open and sat up, quivering. Enough moonlight was filtering in to reveal shadowy outlines.

"Don! Oh God, I'm sorry. Did I wake you up?"

"Never mind. You were having a nightmare, weren't you?"

"Yes. I do, sometimes." Quite often, actually. Too often.

He was still trembling, just as he had been then. Don sat down on the groundsheet and put an arm round him. The night was warm. Neither of them had a top on, and the touch was hugely comforting.

"Never mind," said Don again. "Give it five minutes, then go back to sleep, and the nightmare will have gone." He did not ask what it was about. "Just think of something good, like our finds." He waited patiently till Mark stopped trembling. "There, that's better now, isn't it?" He might have been calming a child. "You'll be all right now. Night!" He gave him a gentle squeeze and went back to his own tent.

Mark reflected guiltily that he had not thanked him for his comfort. He was better now, in a way. But he saw more clearly than ever that he was in love, which made it all the more impossible to reveal his shame. After that performance, he could trust himself even less. Whether or not Don was gay. Even if he was gay, how could he foist himself on him while burdened with this trauma, this stigma? It would be grossly unfair, despite Don's kindness. Because of his kindness. To spill the beans might scupper everything. Could easily scupper everything. Would scupper everything. He sighed, part sigh, part groan.

He tried wrenching his mind away from himself, towards something good. As instructed, he conjured up images of their finds, and enjoyed them. The clothes. The pisspot. The knife. The graffito. The graffito. Maglocunus and Dumnorix, together, all that long ago. He envied them their togetherness. They merged into an image of Mark and Don, together. That was something good too. Very good. Something he'd give anything for. But ... but it wasn't possible, was it?

That brought him back, full circle, to where he had started. He had been dropping off. Now with a jerk he was wide awake again and back in despair. He let out another sigh, this time more than half a groan, and wished Don had not left.

A few feet away, Don also lay awake, wondering. Did I intrude too much, or not enough? I wish Mark would say what his trouble is. If I understood, I might be able to help more. But I can't probe, if he doesn't want to talk. And I can hardly complain about that - I'd never be able to spew out my own miseries to someone else. I thought mine were bad enough, but he seems to be in a worse hell - at least I don't get nightmares. If he was gay - if I knew he was gay - I might take the plunge. But I don't. So I can't.

He heard Mark's second groan. No, I left him too early, he thought. The job's not finished. He went back. Mark was now lying on his front, head sideways on the pillow, shoulders outside the sleeping bag. Don lay down beside him, also on his front, on the groundsheet. Without a word he laid an arm over Mark's shoulders. Mark gave a small surprised grunt of relief and welcome and presently, to judge by his breathing, he slept. The air might be warm, but the ground was chilly and hard, and it was a long time before Don, giving his ease for another, found sleep too.

It was full light when he woke, as usual with a woody. It took a minute to recall where he was and why. Neither of them had moved. His arm was still over Mark, and Mark's face was not much more than a foot away. He studied it. A small pulse beat in the temple. The wide mouth was fuller than usual, relaxed in sleep. Don longed to kiss it. The mousy hair was tousled. The cheeks and chin and lips showed a faint and patchy haze of stubble. Don longed to stroke it.

He closed his eyes to let the picture sink in, and when he opened them again he found Mark awake and studying him in turn. And, little did he know it, longing to kiss him too. Both blushed at being caught in such close proximity and thinking such thoughts. Don removed his arm and pulled away.

"Well, you did get some sleep, then," he said awkwardly.

"Yes." Mark reassembled memories of last night and the shutters came down over his eyes. "Er, thanks to you. I was in a right state, wasn't I? You were very kind." He knew his words were stilted, but they were the best he could do.

"That's OK." Don wanted to end the awkwardness. "I need a pee."

He rolled over and crawled stiffly out, taking care to hide his woody. He went first to the trough to splash himself fully awake and let his cock subside. Only then could he pee. It was another minute before Mark emerged. He'd presumably needed time too. Still embarrassed, they prepared and ate a silent breakfast.

Don had the uncomfortable feeling of being carried along on a tide beyond his control. He could only swim with it, though he did not know where it was taking him. Taking them. Wherever it was, there might still be a long way to go. This was only their fourth breakfast together. Already, in that short time, both of them had changed greatly. There were still - he counted - seventeen breakfasts to come. How far might he have travelled by the seventeenth? What might Mark be like then? As he watched him lathering his face, a quirky idea crept into his mind, for a yardstick to measure another sort of progress by.

"Mark. Leave a bit unshaved. Please. I want to see how fast it grows."

Mark was startled. "You've got a fixation, haven't you?" Then he laughed. "OK, why not? It'll be days, though, before you see much difference." He started his scraping a quarter of an inch below the bottom of his right sideburn. The awkwardness was broken.

The air felt sultry this morning, as if the dry spell was coming to an end, and they were lethargic. It was just as well, perhaps, that their day's work turned out to be routine and demanded little concentration. They cleared the rest of the bedroom, finding absolutely nothing else on the floor, and nothing else when they washed the rest of the wall plaster. They worked for the most part in silence, but in no way a negative silence. Each was deeply entangled in his own perplexities, and saw that the other was too.

They measured up what they had not measured, and held the staff for Bob when he took the levels. He took photos of the graffito, but left photographing the whole room until he had better light and the floor had been mopped up. By now it was half past four and too late for either, and both Mark and Don were feeling the worse for lack of sleep. Anyway, the god was expected. At that point there was the toot of a horn and they saw a figure waving from the Fosse Way.

"It's Miriam at last!" said Bob. "We're going to need a couple of sturdy porters, please, boys."

They went down to the road and were introduced to the deputy curator of the Bath museum. In the boot of her car was a stout wooden box about eighteen inches square with a carrying handle either side. It was fairly shallow and nearly full of sand. Face-down in the sand and secured by a leather strap lay the god's head, revealing no more than a mass of snake-like tresses.

"Well, here he is, Bob," she said. "We're sorry to say goodbye to him, even if only temporarily. We've become very attached to him. But he is yours. Kevin and Harry have spent ages cleaning the incrustation off, and I think you'll approve of the result. But better not undo him now, not till you've got him on site. That sand box is a nice safe way of carrying him. And for standing him in. His neck's broken a bit diagonally, and he can't stand up by himself."

As the boys lifted the box carefully on to the verge they overheard Miriam talking under her voice to Bob. They were not meant to hear, but they could not help it. "Latest news from the museum. Harry and Kevin are now an item. They told us yesterday. Keep it under your hat."

"Ho! Thanks. Right, will do," Bob replied quietly. Then out loud, "Want a quick look at what we've been up to here?"

"I'd love to, Bob, but I've got to get back before the museum closes. It's been a crazy day. Can I come next week? I'll give you a ring." She turned her car with difficulty in the narrow road and, waving, roared off back to Bath.

The boys carried the god in his box the short distance to the site, slowly, almost reverentially. He was heavy, and they could not risk dropping him. Bob paced priest-like behind them.

"Let's have a go at setting him up," he suggested. "A trial run, ready for tomorrow. In the temple, surely."

They lowered the box on to the floor against the west wall, opposite the door. The god was still face-down.

"No, that's too low. He couldn't see out properly from there. People couldn't see him."

"What about that column in the portico?" suggested Don.

It lay where it had fallen centuries ago off the portico wall, intact, four feet high and thick in proportion. It was no great problem to roll it into the inner shrine but hard work to heave it upright. They tested it, and it was as firm as a rock. They undid the god's strap and lifted the box on to the column where it sat like a large capital, perfectly steady.

Everyone else was on the point of leaving and crowded in to watch. One on each side, the boys lifted the head, turned it and lowered it, wiggling its neck into the sand until it was stable, its eyes level with their own. There was a murmur of approval, and a couple of cameras clicked. People were glad to welcome the god back, cleaned of encrusted dirt and set up in an appropriate place. But they had all seen him before. By the time the boys had adjusted the head to face more squarely out of the door and brushed some loose sand from its cheeks, everyone but Bob had gone.

They stepped back to study him at leisure. The photograph had not done Maponus justice. It had not lied. But it could not capture that almost tangible feeling of presence, as if he was alive and gazing back at them, serene, compassionate, understanding. They were transfixed.

"That's splendid, isn't it?" remarked Bob happily, lighting his pipe. "Couldn't be in a better position. It was right to bring him back. Well, shall we take him down and put him to bed? We daren't leave him out by himself."

The boys broke the god's gaze and exchanged a glance. "Bob, can we stay here a bit longer? We want to ... look at him properly. We'll take him back to the hut. We'll be very careful. Promise!"

Bob was nobody's fool. For the last day or two he had sensed that something wholly beyond his control was spilling over into the present from the distant past. He was still not entirely comfortable with the thought of these teenagers being caught up in this ambience of ancient gay love. Not because he was in the least repelled by it, not now, and if the boys had been his own sons he would not have worried. But they weren't. They were someone else's, temporarily in his charge, and he was uneasy about how their parents might react if his suspicions proved correct.

Yet, yet. They were responsible lads, and sensitive. He had been impressed, even moved, by what they had said last night, and how they had said it. He saw a maturity there, not only intellectual - that had long been obvious - but emotional too. Maybe it was only dawning, but it was unmistakable. The whole of today they had been withdrawn. He had noticed that. It was not a hostile withdrawal, but as if they were thinking hard. Maybe it had been prompted by last night's conversation.

Above all, he sensed that they were now facing their moment of truth. They had to face it by themselves. The best way to help them was to leave them alone.

"OK, then. You do that. See you tomorrow." He walked to his car as briskly as he could, without looking back. Good luck, boys, he thought. You both deserve it.

They were standing shoulder to shoulder, eyes turned doubtfully sideways to each other. Fidgeting restlessly in their minds were the same unhappinesses, the same uncertainties, the same hopes. They looked back at Maponus.

They framed no conscious questions, they received no recognisable answers, but they knew. The choppy sea of their doubts was stilled into a millpond of calm certainty. They were both gay, they were in love, and it was right.

They turned to face each other, shyly, in wonder, as if meeting for the first time, and discovered they were holding hands. They had not been aware of it happening, but it did not seem strange. They smiled with a mixture of surprise and delight. They embraced awkwardly, heads over each other's shoulders, and their throats grew tight.

After a while they pulled apart, gave each other a questioning smile, and looked at Maponus again. Beyond him the low branch of a tree was swaying very gently in the evening breeze. To them it seemed that his head was nodding against a stationary backdrop.

Armed with his approval, they kissed. First tentatively, then with growing passion while body ground against body. Once more they broke apart, looked at each other and at Maponus, and again he nodded.

Wellies were kicked off. Dirty shirts were pulled over tousled heads. Filthy shorts were dropped down muddy legs. Strained briefs were freed. They hugged again, skin to skin, cock to cock, humping hard, in full view of the Fosse Way. Then they lay down, sixty-nining urgently on the warm hard flagstones of the god's sanctuary, under Maponus' benevolent eye, and brought each other to ecstasy.

Not only physical ecstasy. Months of bottled-up frustration and loneliness gushed out as well. The ache of rejection and alienation fled howling away, to be replaced by the infinite peace of love and fulfilment.

"Oh, Mark!"

"Oh, my God!" It was not clear who Mark was addressing.

He stirred himself first. He fished in his mouth for a bit he had not swallowed, and smeared it on the paving in front of Maponus. Don followed suit. It was their thank-offering.

In exhaustion of body and the exhaustion of release they collapsed once more into each other's arms, and the god watched over them. First as they wept, then as they slept.

 

Chapter 8. Thursday: priests in black gowns

The gates of this chapel were shut,
And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door;
So I turned to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.

William Blake, Songs of Experience

They were woken by a low peal of thunder. For a minute they were confused and self-conscious at finding themselves lying naked together on the stone floor of a Roman temple. Then, as the immensity of their breakthrough sank in, their shyness evaporated, never to return, and they wrapped each other in their arms and sobbed their relief once more.

More thunder brought them back to the present. The wind was rising and it was twilight. High time to get the god to bed and themselves to their tents. They climbed stiffly to their feet and approached Maponus. As they lifted him they hesitated. It felt somehow irreverent to turn him face-down into the sand, but at that moment a flash of lightning lit him up, and new shadows altered his smile from the enigmatic to the consenting. They laid him in his box and, stark naked except for their mud, carried him to the hut and locked him in.

Side close by side, as if tied together for a three-legged race, they returned to the temple, where they shuffled into their wellies and scooped up their clothes. Rain began to fall heavily. They did not mind. It was warmer than the hose-pipe, and by the time they reached the tents, water sluicing off them, there was no longer any need for the hose-pipe. Don's early suspicions proved well-founded. Mark's tent was leaking badly, and they bundled everything from it into Don's and towelled themselves dry.

They felt no hunger - eating was far down their priority list. They had no urge to talk - they were still fumbling their way through the first wonderment of two-way love. What they did need, above all, was more bodily contact. They needed reassurance, that they were no longer chained alone in their prison cells but free to roam hand in hand through their new-found garden of love. They discovered that their sleeping bags would zip together to make a double one, and wriggled in to renew their flesh-to-flesh togetherness. Their overloaded minds soaring away on a wave of gratitude, they promptly fell asleep again.

They were woken at half past seven by Don's mobile. It was Bob, phoning from home.

"Morning! What's the weather like with you?"

Rain was still drumming on the tent. "Cats and dogs," Don replied blearily.

"And the forecast's lousy. All right, then, we'll write today off. I'll phone round to let people know. Would you mind checking the site as soon as you can? And refuel the pump, of course. And would you drape a plastic sheet over the graffito, to let it dry out a bit? If you need to get in touch, I'll be at home catching up on paperwork. You're happy enough by yourselves?"

Don smiled to himself. "Very happy, thanks. We've plenty to do, and plenty to talk about."

"Good. See you tomorrow, then, if the gods relent."

Don reported Bob's message. The bag was beautifully cosy, Mark's body was beautifully cosy, and he had a morning woody. He wanted to snuggle back, and Mark wanted him to snuggle back. But first things first.

"Not yet, Mark. Let's get our work out of the way. And before that I must have a pee."

"Now you mention it," Mark yawned, "I'm bursting too."

Woodies deflating, they walked naked into the bucketing rain. Large warm drops splatted seductively on their skin. They were already, by force of habit, turning bashful backs to each other when the penny dropped. What did they need to hide now? Everybody peed, except perhaps Miss Dinsdale. It was not in the least offensive. Why be shamefaced about a natural function? Last night they'd done something far more intimate together.

So, as they let the streams fly, they stood facing, smiling, look-no-hands, openly displaying, openly admiring what they had not had time to admire properly before. As he peed, Don farted. He did not apologise. Why should he, now? No longer any need to bottle anything up. Mark took no offence. Why should he? He farted back, and they laughed at their freedom.

"We've got a lot to clear out of our systems, haven't we, Don my love?"

Don knew exactly what he meant. Not just pee and gas and crap, not just a massive backlog of spunk, but a spring-clean of the horrors festering in the dustbins of their minds.

Meanwhile, duty called. They spread out yesterday's soggy clothes and towels in the dry warmth of the hay-barn and sallied forth through the wet warmth of the rain, hand in hand, wearing nothing but squelching wellies. No point in getting more clothes sodden, and nobody else would be about in this weather. They opened the hut and stood Maponus up to say good morning to him. The site looked in reasonable trim, but the stream was in spate and water was rising in the hostel trenches. They refuelled the pump, increased its speed, spread a large plastic sheet over the graffito and weighted it with stones on the trench lip.

The next stage in their clear-out took them to the Portaloo. Mark went in first and bolted the door. But as he sat down, water dripping off him, he had second thoughts. Here too, what was the point of traditional modesty when everything else was now open? Why leave a single barrier up? He unbolted the door and pushed it wide. Don was standing statue-like outside, looking into the hut, curls plastered flat, slim smooth body flowing with rain, water trickling off his foreskin as if he was still peeing. A sight to die for. Mark's cock went hard. Aware that he was being watched, Don turned to gaze at Mark as he sat enthroned in naked glory, beautiful, rampant, arousing. His cock rose too.

Mark finished, washed his hands in the basin, and came out. Don took his place, under Mark's eye. He agreed whole-heartedly with the unspoken message. No need for coyness now. No need to hold anything back, of any sort. And he urgently needed to purge himself of something other than crap though, in a quite different sense, it was crap as well.

When he had done he stepped out. He dropped to his knees so that Mark's equipment was throbbing a foot from his face. He looked up. There was no concealing towel there, only loving consent in the hazel eyes. He leant forward and cradled the whiskery balls in his hand and fed his mouth over the cock, lapping it with his tongue, bobbing up and down, tickling his nose on Mark's forest, a rain forest now, fondling the wet hairiness of the sack and the crack behind it.

An archaeological site in a Wiltshire downpour was a far cry from that hotel room on the Costa del Sol. But no fist thumped into Don's face. And before long the ghost of Matt was exorcised.

From the pinnacle of his orgasm Mark was aware, though he could not know the details, that Don had just banished some demon and that explanations would come later. He too had a demon to dispose of.

In his case, it was a far cry from Chris's bed in her auntie's house, but he asked Don to lie on his back on the grass. He knelt beside him and lowered his face to his, making sure that both tongues were in Don's mouth. As they wrestled wetly there, he placed a hand on his flat stomach and gently stroked it. Then he inched downwards through the thicket of hair - nothing like as luxuriant as his own - until he met his target.

There it was, brushing the back of his hand as it stood proudly clear of Don's belly. He stroked it and continued on to the ball-sack, tight and hairless, and, as Don mewed in pleasure and raised his legs, along the corrugated valley beyond. He transferred his mouth from Don's lips to his cock.

A smooth young body, yes. But no, not incomplete, not genitally challenged. Equipment all present and very correct. And as Don bucked and moaned and presently came, Chris finally released her iron grip on Mark's soul.

Last night's loving had been the urgent, necessary, primeval first-fruit of their union. This loving was just as essential, just as urgent, but different. Like their crapping, it purged them, emptied them of stinking dregs whose time was past. In the pouring rain it was elemental, without seeming in the least bizarre. And once again, under the approving eye of Maponus as he watched through the doorway of the hut, it was eminently right.

They put him gratefully back in his sand, locked up, climbed the stile, and waded through the long grass.

"Don't get a tick on your prick," said Don. "I'm the only one allowed to suck there."

Their next needs, now, were food, plenty of it, and talk. They had eaten nothing and uttered very few words since Bob had left last night. They towelled off once more, brewed coffee in the shelter of the tent-flap, and ate greedily. They wriggled back into the sleeping bag. There they kissed deeply again, finding remains of breakfast. There Don could at last stroke Mark's face, glorying in the soft stubble. Mark could at last stroke Don's, revelling in its smoothness.

And back together, skin against skin, they were at last ready to talk. They knew they were in love, they knew they wanted to be together for ever, and they did not waste breath on saying so. It was so obvious that words were superfluous: they said it with their bodies. But Mark raised the vital question.

"Don, what happened last night?"

"I don't know. I knew I loved you. But I wasn't sure you were gay. And - I'm sorry - I still couldn't trust you. I couldn't trust myself to trust you. Then out of blue I saw that you were gay, that we could trust each other, that I wasn't going to make a bloody fool of myself again."

"Same here. Exactly the same. I was just standing there with you, wanting to say I loved you but not daring to, thinking how bloody difficult everything was, and suddenly it all fell into place, and I knew that it was right."

"Yes. It was right. But it hasn't all fallen into place, Mark. I mean, it's OK with us now, thank God. Right now. And for the next fortnight. But what happens after that? We live twenty miles apart. How do we meet up then? If we go to each other's place too often my parents will smell a rat and forbid us."

Mark was aghast. "They suspect you're gay, then?"

"They know. I've been aching to tell you, Mark my love, and just haven't dared. But I can now. This is what happened."

Cans of worms could now be opened without fear of ridicule. Don told the whole of the Estepona story. He left nothing out, and it took some time. All the while, Mark was hugging him hard, aching in sympathy.

"And that's why I gave you that blow-job, in that way. To get it out of my system. It's haunted me ever since. I know I made a balls-up of everything. And that Matt did too. I might have got over it, if it had been just that. But two awful things followed on. After Matt had let me down, I found I couldn't trust anyone an inch, and I lost all my friends. Drove them away. I was horrid to them, I know.

"And Pop and Mum were horrid to me. They made it feel dirty when I knew it wasn't. Or wouldn't be. OK, casual sex isn't the best thing. But they tried to get me to promise not to love, either. They hung up a fucking big notice saying 'Thou shalt not'. Not literally, of course. Well, I'm free of that. For the moment. Here with you. But when I get back home, back to them, it'll still be there. They'll be watching me like lynxes. What the hell do we do about that? And what about your Dad?"

"He's no better. Not really. He doesn't know I'm gay, thank God. But about three years ago, when my voice broke, he gave me The Sex Talk. He was as embarrassed as me. He said that I'd probably try jerking off - 'experimenting with myself', he actually said - and I'd probably drool over girls. He said those were natural. But I wasn't to do anything more, not until I was old enough to love and marry. And the worst sin but one was drooling over boys, and the worst sin of all was doing things with them. He seemed to think proper love wasn't possible between boys. OK, I can live with that, unless he finds out.

"But, oh God, Don. My real problem is school."

He told of his loneliness. Of his quest for a boy to love or at least a boy to bed. Of the fateful encounter with Chris. Why he had needed to do what he had done just now, in that weird way, to clear that obsession out of his system. To assure himself of Don's masculinity. Don felt no desire whatever to laugh. He hugged Mark tighter.

"I know I was a bloody idiot, but the damage has been done." Mark told of Roy's treachery and of that hideous last day of term. Tears were rolling down his cheeks, and Don kissed them off.

"Don ... I can't go back to that school. I just can't. And I can't talk about school with Dad. He'd go ballistic. Anyway, he never has time to talk about anything. So what the hell do we do about that?"

What indeed? They agonised helplessly. Communing with their bodies, sharing their burdens, purging their souls, had been a relief beyond all calculation. It had resolved their old predicament.

But it had replaced it with another. For all too long they had been in solitary confinement, locked in their dark cells of self-disgust and suspicion and torment. They had now been released for a brief spell in the sunshine and freedom of love, but soon the prison doors threatened to close again. Meanwhile, their only solace was the togetherness of their minds and bodies, while they were still available to each other.

*

The Venerable Kenneth Muir, archdeacon of Bath, put down the receiver with a sigh of relief. The phone immediately rang again. He picked it up, listened, replied, and put it down with another sigh of relief. Last things first. He had a word with his wife, lifted the phone once more and dialled Don's mobile. It was a while before there was an answer.

"Good afternoon, Don. I imagine it is raining on you as it is on us."

"Hard as ever, Pop. No digging today."

"What are you doing instead?"

"We're in the tent, er, talking."

There was a pregnant pause.

"And how are you getting on together?"

"Oh, like a house on fire."

There was another pause. "Have you made any more interesting finds?"

"Yes, quite a number." Don mentally ran through them, sorting out which could safely be discussed with a homophobic archdeacon and which definitely could not.

"Well, we are coming over on Saturday, so perhaps we can see them then."

"That's, er, good, Pop. You just coming to have a look round?"

"Partly. But we are also coming to take you away."

"Away!"

"I have just booked you in for the week on a course at Norton Malreward. That is our diocesan retreat in the Mendips."

"But I can't miss a week of the dig!"

"I am sorry about that. But you are fortunate. Your name has been down for a while, and the counselling service were on the phone a minute ago to inform me of a cancellation. They have given you the place."

"But Pop! I don't want to! What's this thing about, anyway?"

"We will talk about it when we see you, and show you the literature. The course is designed to help people such as you. People with, ah, your sort of problem. It is run by experts, very good ones. Psychiatrists and church counsellors. It will do you a great deal of good, and you will enjoy it into the bargain."

"Like hell I will! It sounds like brainwashing! I'm not going!"

The archdeacon lost patience and his temper. "Donald. You will not use that kind of language and you will not take that attitude. We know what is good for you, and you are going whether you want to or not. We will arrive about eleven on Saturday. Please be packed up and ready."

Don did not answer. The archdeacon hung up and dialled Philip Bushby's number.

*

"Mark! They're taking me away! On Saturday, for a week!" Don was on the brink of tears.

"Oh Christ! What for?"

"Sending me on a fucking course. To try to cure me of being gay. Fucking psychiatrists and counsellors and things. No way I can get out of it."

They looked at each other in despair.

"OK, Don, so you've got to go. Once you're there, refuse to play ball. Be polite, but unco-operative. Close your mind to them. They won't be able to get at you then."

"Yes. But it's going to be hell, being there, being away from you. And so soon after ..."

"I'll be thinking of you. And I'll still be here when you get back." Mark was trying to transmit all the comfort he could. Which wasn't much.

"Yes, but a week away! Oh God!"

They hugged, tightly. Don was now sobbing. Ten minutes later his mobile rang again.

*

The Reverend Philip Bushby, rector of Chew Magna with Nempnett Thrubwell and Ubley, put the phone down and sat back with a huge sigh. The first thing was to talk to Mark.

He was sadly conscious that he had neglected his son, that he had not given him the time he should have done. He had tried to justify it with the argument that being a single parent and an overworked parish priest were simply incompatible. Ever since Heather died, life had been too hectic to do both jobs properly. But that was a hollow argument. He knew it was hollow, and felt a surge of guilt. He had relied so much on Heather. Her death had left him isolated, ill-equipped to raise his son single-handed. Time was when Mark had been a cheerful boy, but no longer - he was sullen now, uncommunicative, as if bottling something up. And he had never really tried to find out what was wrong.

But this time he had to talk to him. And it had to be face to face, not over the phone. Where on earth could he find the time to drive round to the far side of Bristol, and talk, and drive back? It would take two hours at the very least. He looked at his diary. He couldn't possibly make it today. Nor tomorrow - he couldn't miss that. But Saturday morning, if he skipped the local council of churches meeting ... Yes, that would fit in well with what Kenneth had just said.

He must let Mark know he was coming, though. But Mark did not have a mobile. When offered one, some months back, he had replied that there was little point as he had nobody to phone, or to phone him. So the rector hunted out Bob Gill's mobile number.

"Mr Gill? Philip Bushby, Mark's father. I'm truly sorry to interrupt you, but I'm in need of a word with Mark."

"Oh, hullo! Look, I'm sorry - I'm at home, not on the site. Rain's stopped play. But he'll be with Don Muir - they're inseparable - and I can give you Don's mobile number." He did so. "But while you're on the line, Mr Bushby, may I say how glad we are that Mark's with us. He's a huge asset, worth his weight in gold. On the ball, friendly, intelligent, reliable, hard-working - you name it. Along with Don, he's the best worker I've ever had."

"Good heavens! I'm delighted to hear it, of course. But I'm astonished too - his school reports have been dismal recently, and frankly he's becoming more and more of a problem at home."

"Well, he was very subdued when he came, but he's blossomed marvellously. I only hope he stays till the end of the season. And comes back next year."

"We'll have to see. Mr Gill, would you object to me dropping over on Saturday morning for a chat with Mark? Would that be bad for discipline? I understand the Muirs are going too."

Bob chuckled. "Mr Bushby, there's not much discipline at Nettleton! Any time you like, as long as you like. Look forward to seeing you then. Bye."

The rector dialled again.

"Don? This is Mark's father. Mr Gill tells me you're rained off."

"That's right." His voice was barely under control, and he was wary of parents today. All parents. "Want to speak to Mark?"

"Please."

Mark was wary too, and surprised. "Hi, Dad?"

"Hullo, Mark. You all right?"

"Yes, fine."

"Mark, this is just to let you know that I'm coming over to see you on Saturday. Something's cropped up that we need to talk about."

"Er, what?"

"Not over the phone. We need to be face to face. I hear the Muirs will be at Nettleton too. I'll try to get there at the same time. Eleven. All right?"

"All right, Dad. Bye."

Don had been watching the shutters close again over Mark's eyes. "More trouble?"

"Dad's coming to talk to me. On Saturday."

"What about?"

"He wouldn't say. But it must be something ... bad, to bring him all this way."

"Can he have heard about you? From one of the kids at school?"

"Not very likely. Anyway, he knows your parents are coming. He's coming at the same time."

They looked at each other in frantic, renewed, worry.

"They can't know about us, though! After all, it's less than a day ..."

"Mark! Did someone see us last night? In the temple? From the Fosse Way?"

"Too far away to identify us, surely."

"Or Pop might have guessed. About us. And told your Dad, to warn him about me."

They agonised once more, endlessly, fruitlessly, battered by apprehension and the sense of powerlessness.

About seven the rain stopped. The boys wandered down to the site again to check that all was well. They refuelled the pump and returned the jerrycan of two-stroke to the hut. They were still worrying away at the problems that tumbled relentlessly around their heads.

Then the sight of the god face-down in his box set Mark's mind speculating. Did his authority run only in the temple, or here too? Authority? Did he really have any? Had he actually played a part in what happened last night, or was it their wishful thinking? When they had started chewing over these questions this morning they had got side-tracked. Might he shed some light on their quandary now? It could do no harm to try. He stood Maponus on his neck in the sand, sat on the floor in front and pulled Don down beside him, their arms around each other.

Their minds immediately began to assemble snippets of information from the last few days and to knit them together.

Maponus' record of uniting young men and proclaiming that, in the right circumstances, gay sex was entirely acceptable.

Bob, talking about the god's head - "He turned up the very day we started."

Bob, referring to himself - "Personally, I don't have any problem with what went on here. I would have done, till very recently, but not now."

Bob again, reporting old Miss Dinsdale's conversion - "Well, she's turned over a new leaf now."

Miriam, gossiping about those blokes who had cleaned up Maponus at the museum - "Harry and Kevin are now an item. They told us yesterday."

Above all, their own experience in the temple.

Therefore ...

When added together, all this gave an answer that made sense, provided you took an astonishing leap of faith. Nobody else had added it together, as far as they knew. Bob could have done, but he had had no reason to. They gazed at the god for a long time, wondering. He returned nothing but his enigmatic smile. Yet, in the light of their answer, it was clear enough now what they had to do. It seemed a risk, a bloody big risk, but there was no alternative. It involved trust, a massive dose of trust. But in the last day or so they had found that, at Nettleton, trust worked.

In the end they put Maponus to bed again and went back to the tent, where they cooked a meal and spent the night in fretful hope and hopeful love-making.

 

Chapter 9. Friday: an infant crying in the night

Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last, far off - at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.

So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.

Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam

Friday morning, though not so warm, was fine again. It helped boost their hopes, and raised a question they had not thought about so far.

"Do you reckon we ought to tell Bob?" asked Don as he lovingly watched Mark dealing with two days' worth of stubble. "He's on our side, and we want to keep him on our side, and we can trust him. I think we ought to."

Mark pondered as he scraped at his jaw. "Yes, I think so too. But just about us teaming up. It wouldn't be fair to get him involved with our parents and all that."

"No, it wouldn't. OK, we'll do that."

They were on the site in good time. They refuelled the pump and were in the hut, about to pick up Maponus' box, when Bob arrived.

"Morning! Everything OK here? Talk about the heavens opening! You're not drowned, then?"

"We're fine, thanks. Everything's fine. But Mark's tent leaks like a sieve. So he's moved into mine. Much better." Don took the plunge. "And we're sharing a sleeping bag too. Much cosier."

Bob was not in the least surprised. There was something different about them today. An air of new maturity, of new confidence, of uncertainties settled but also of new anxieties acquired. Since they seemed to expect him to probe further, he raised an obliging eyebrow.

"Bob. Don't let anyone else know, please, not till we say. But we've teamed up. We're in love."

Bob nodded, smiling gently. "I thought I could see it coming."

They were gobsmacked. "That's more than we could!"

"Well, sometimes it's least obvious to those most closely concerned." He could not help adding a mischievous question. "I take it you've got Maponus' approval?"

"Oh yes, of course."

"You've asked him, then?"

"Well, not exactly asked. But he did approve."

"Hmmm."

They had said that seriously, not in fun, and he could not disguise his disbelief. He looked down at the back of the god's head. What they had heard, he reckoned, was what they wanted to hear. Auto-suggestion. Wish-fulfilment. Well, so long as they were happy, it hardly mattered. He was not shocked, any more than he was surprised. But he was still apprehensive.

"I hear your parents are coming over tomorrow. Are you going to tell them? About you?"

"Yes."

"And are you going to tell them about the cult?"

"They're bound to ask what we've found."

Oh Lord, thought Bob, what have I encouraged? When the balloon goes up I just hope they don't think I've been putting ideas into the boys' heads. He sighed inwardly.

"Hmmm. Well, you're starting on a big journey, you know, and I hope it doesn't turn out too rough. I wish you well. Of course I do."

He was guiltily conscious of sounding unenthusiastic, but he did not want to dwell on it, not for longer than he had to.

"Look, about today. Could you mop up the floor as best you can, and I'll take photos while the light's good. The plaster chap will be here some time in the morning to deal with the graffito. And when that's done we'll have finished with that bedroom, and I'd like you to start on the next-door one. Now we know there's no stratigraphy - the grit layers will be the same - I don't see why you shouldn't dig straight down with spades, down to say fifteen inches from the floor, and trowel from there on. It'll save a lot of effort if you simply backfill the first room by shovelling the spoil straight over the wall. OK?"

So they installed Maponus in the temple and drew encouragement from him. Then they dealt with their floor, which was still awash. The pump was handling most of the water flowing in from the courtyard, but some still seeped through, and they could not get it totally dry. But they did their best, and Bob took his photos. The plaster expert duly came and cunningly removed the square foot with the graffito on, and they started in on emptying the second bedroom.

It was hard labour, not conducive to conversation, and in any event they had to be discreet. The odd look or even touch within the privacy of their trench was one thing. But however blasé old Miss Dinsdale might be about the Roman pricks she specialised in, they still couldn't risk her or anyone else seeing them kissing. Undemonstrative love was the order of the day.

Shortly before knocking-off time, Bob was with them, viewing their progress, when his mobile rang.

"Hullo. Ah! Already! Of course." He gestured to Don for his pad and pencil, flipped to a clean page and scribbled furiously. "Yes. Yes. What? Oh, yes. Yes. Really? Can you spell that? That's superb. Thanks very much indeed. Bye."

"That was Sarah at Bradford. First report. Actually she called it an initial preliminary provisional report. Cautious so-and-so. Has to be, I suppose. But, knowing her, the final one will be exactly the same, only with much more detail. Anyway, they've already separated the items and straightened them out. As we guessed, both piles contain male clothing. Both of them include a cloak with a hood, a tunic, an undershirt - I suppose she means vest - and - can't read my own writing - subligar? - what's that, Don?"

"Underpants."

"Oh. And socks, hobnailed shoes, and a leather belt and sheath. So that lot's the same for both.

"Now, the eastern pile, that's the one in Mark's corner, has not got a knife in the sheath - we could have told her that - but does include a leather purse containing three silver and seven bronze coins, all minted around 380 or shortly before, and a small linen shoulder bag containing two combs, a razor, a little mirror, nuts, the remains of four apples, and some stuff which she thinks is oatcakes and dried meat but needs a lot of work doing on it.

"Now for the owner of Don's pile. That's Dumnorix. Sarah reckons from the size of his clothes that he was a few inches shorter than Maglocunus. And he didn't have a purse or a bag, or presumably a razor. So probably he was the younger. But his sheath does have a knife in. From Sarah's description, it's the identical twin of Miss Dinsdale's from the shop, and the panel on the handle is almost professionally inscribed. It says DVMNORIGIS."

The boys were thrilled. "Wow!" said Don. "They didn't have much luggage, then. It doesn't sound as if they'd travelled all that far."

At that point somebody called for Bob and he went off to attend to them, in high contentment.

From the word go, Nettleton had proved a marvellous site. The last two weeks had turned it into a superlative one. They still had Lord knows how long to go before they finished, but he was already looking forward to writing it up in learned journals and the final definitive publication. And when those clothes came back from Bradford they would have a special exhibition in the museum, along with Maponus and the altar and all the rest. It would be a crowd-puller. And at the opening the boys would be in the seats of honour.

The boys were in high contentment too. "Hey, Dum," exclaimed Mark, "I've had an idea."

"What did you call me?"

"Dum. It's OK, not dumb with a b. Dum, without. Dumnorix. After all, your pile of clothes was his. And you're shorter than me. And younger."

Don laughed. He liked it, a lot. "OK, and you're Mag, then. Right. What's your big idea?"

"To search the web when I get home. To see if anyone sells knives anything like that one. You ought to have one. I'm wondering if having a knife with a prick handle was a sign of the god's approval. A rite of passage, sort of, for the younger partner."

Don liked that idea too. "Maybe other couples were flooded out," he suggested. "Maybe we'll find more clothes in other bedrooms, and more knives. And get some sort of pattern."

But that thought brought him down to earth with a bump. Would he still be here when other bedrooms were emptied? It was in the lap of the gods. An ancient saying, that, and how appropriate. His confidence wavered.

At that point things began to go wrong. It was five o'clock and time to pack up. Their shovelling had been tedious and they were in no mood to continue. Don reached for his spade and yelped. A wasp taking a rest on the handle had stung him on the skin between thumb and forefinger.

"Shit!" He sucked the place. "That hurt! And I'm allergic to wasp stings. I'd better go and deal with this. Sorry, Mag, d'you mind clearing up by yourself?"

He went off to the hut to consult with Christine, who was the first-aider and looked after the cuts and scratches inevitable on a dig. She applied Wasp-eze, gave him an antihistamine tablet and some spares, and made him sit still to slow down the spread of the toxin. Mark, having tidied away the tools, enlisted Bob's help to put the god to bed and, as they laid him in the sand, received a boost of optimism. When they dumped the box in the hut Don was sitting there, looking pale.

"How's it feeling, Dum?"

"Still hurts like hell. But I'll be OK. Just need to rest as much as I can. It's never lasted more than twelve hours before."

"But you've still got to get to your tent," Bob pointed out. "Tell you what. I'll drive you round. Save you walking."

Mark summoned up his strength, picked Don up like a baby, arms under his back and knees, and carried him the short distance to the Fosse Way. Bob drove them in state to the camping field, little more than a quarter of a mile as the crow flew but a good two miles by road, and delivered them to the tent.

There Mark made Don lie down and stay down. He was concerned but, in the light of Don's own prognosis, not unduly worried, and he even relished the prospect of nursing his new-found love. He stripped Don of his jeans, fed him into the sleeping bag, and cooked a meal, which Don only pecked at. His hand was now red around the sting and hot and swollen all over, and he was becoming feverish. Mark grew more worried. When he had cleared up and insisted on Don having a long drink, he lay down beside him, stroking, whispering, soothing.

For a while he thought he'd succeeded. Don did calm down, and lay back with Mark's arm over him, flushed and restless but more or less asleep. Mark spent the time pondering the best way of handling the parental invasion tomorrow. He could only work on the assumption that Don would be in a fit state.

A couple of hours later Don woke up properly. "I need a pee."

Mark didn't want to disturb him. "Stay there." He found an empty milk carton in the rubbish bag and with some difficulty organised Don to pee into it as he lay. He took the carton outside to empty it. It was almost dark. When he came back he found Don crying silently. All of his confidence had evaporated and he had sunk into abject misery.

"Mag, it's not going to work." He hiccuped. "They'll take me away, and you too, and we'll never see each other again."

"Shhh. It will work, Dum. You wait and see. Just have faith."

"But it can't work. Pop and Mum. Your Dad. They hate gays. They hate us. They're ganging up on us. They'll take us away. They're bound to. Oh, Mag!" He began to howl like a child.

All Mark could do was to comfort him like an child, to hug him and talk gentle words of reassurance. Don gradually quietened down and seemed to be asleep again. Mark debated whether he ought to call an ambulance. He found his torch and inspected Don's hand. Though still reddish around the sting, it was much less swollen and much less hot. He was encouraged. But a while later Don woke again, in a similar state, sobbing in despair and not even putting his despair into words. He no longer had any language but a cry.

It seemed to Mark that the problem was now more mental than physical. The fever triggered by the allergic reaction, he reckoned, had resurrected Don's deep-seated insecurity and brought all his submerged fears to the surface. A booster dose of antihistamine would do no harm, and he gave him one. But what Don really needed was a booster dose of trust. There was no doubt, at Nettleton, where that was to be found. Don was in no state to leave the tent. So, since Mohammed could not go to the mountain, he would have to bring the mountain to Mohammed.

About eleven, Don fell asleep again, and Mark could only hope he would not wake up while he was gone. He emptied his rucksack of its contents, all except a couple of sweaters, slung it on his back, and armed with nothing but his torch went out into the night. The torch was hardly necessary, so bright was the moon, but it was an eerie journey. The noisy silence was unnerving, hedges and trees took on strange shapes, the ground felt unfamiliar underfoot and he tripped over tussocks and briars which he had never noticed by daylight.

But the site wore its usual garment of peace. He found the key, opened the hut, and turned Maponus face-up. He had wondered if the god would mind being taken away, but the smile gave him permission. He laid out the sweaters, placed the head carefully on them, and rolled it up. He managed with some difficulty, for life-sized stone heads are heavy, to feed it into his rucksack. With the weight of divinity upon his shoulders he made his way back, this time with surprising ease, to the tent.

Don was lying curled up, whimpering in half-sleep. Mark drew Maponus out of the sack, unwrapped him, and propped him upright against a tent frame. He put a hand on Don's shoulder and shook him gently.

"Dum! Dum! Wake up!"

Don opened his eyes. "Mag! Oh, Mag! You left me!" His face began to crumple again.

"I had to, Dum. To show you it's going to be all right. You've got to understand that. Look at him, Dum! It is going to be all right, isn't it?"

He shone the torch on the god's head. Don's eyes followed the beam incuriously.

"Sit up, Dum. Look properly."

With Mark's arm round him, Don sat up. He looked properly, for a full minute, while the misery faded from his face.

"Yes, you're right. It is going to be all right." He gripped Mark's hand, shook his head as if to clear the cobwebs away, and breathed a deep breath. "Thank you, Mag. I'm sorry. I've been a baby. I ... lost my faith. And you didn't. You were strong enough for both of us"

Tears were on his cheeks again, but tears of relief now. Mark felt equally relieved. Would things have worked if half their combined faith was missing?

"I didn't have a fever to bugger up my mind," he said. "That's the only difference. How's your hand?"

It was the hand he was holding. They inspected it. The swelling had gone and it was no longer hot. Don flexed his fingers and arm.

"Fine. I can still feel the sting, but only faintly. What's the time?"

"Midnight, more or less."

"Seven hours. That's about the usual time it takes to wear off. Though I think it hit me harder than usual. I still feel a bit droopy." He smiled ruefully. "Yes, all right, droopy there too. I don't feel up to that tonight. But with a good zizz I'll be right as rain."

"Dum, can you put your zizz off for a few minutes? A hot drink will do you good. And we ought to think about tomorrow."

He got the stove going under the tent flap. As they waited for the milk to boil, they kissed, gently. As they sipped the hot chocolate, they discussed how to tackle things next morning. When the drink was finished, they emptied the dregs in front of Maponus. Then they fell asleep, and the god watched over them again.

 

Chapter 10. Saturday: that chain which links

Slave to no sect, who takes no private road,
But looks through nature up to nature's god:
Pursues that chain which links the immense design,
Joins heaven and earth, and mortal and divine.

Alexander Pope, Essay on Man

The day of reckoning came. A strong breeze blew and small clouds scudded across an otherwise clear sky. When Don opened his eyes at half past seven he felt almost as good as new. Mark was not in the tent. Nor was the god, but there was a message where the god had been.

Back soon. Taking M home. Bob would have kittens if he found him missing. Luv Mag xxxxx

Soon Mark reappeared, and over breakfast they rehearsed the tactics they had discussed. They would be brazen and hide nothing. Indeed, they would take the bull by the horns. Don would not pack up. They would leave both tents standing, leave Mark's possessions in Don's, leave the flap open and the double sleeping bag in full view. But their battleground must be the site, and a showdown in the camping field would be premature. So they would leave a note here for the parents to read first.

As Mark shaved - the extra quarter inch on his right sideburn was more obvious by now - Don wrote out the note. He addressed it to Pop, Mum and Dad, folded it and attached it prominently to the tent with a clothes peg. It was their declaration of faith, and it did not beat about the bush.

You need to know this before we meet.

We are both gay. It is natural and god-given. It is the way we are made. Nobody can change it, or cure it, or suppress it, not without destroying us. And we love each other. We are not ashamed of that either, nor need you be, nor anyone else. We are talking about love, real love, god-given love. Sex may follow on, but love comes first.

We will be on the site, in the temple, and we can talk about it there. Then we can show you round. Mark's Dad doesn't know the way, so please wait until you've all arrived before coming down.

Love you. Yes, love you,

Don and Mark

They put in the bit about Dad because Pop and Mum would probably arrive first. They were coming from Pucklechurch, not so far away, and they tended to be punctual if not early. Dad was coming from the other side of Bristol and, as Mark said, "he's always late for everything."

They took themselves down to the site and set Maponus up in his sanctuary. The smile this morning seemed not so much enigmatic as conspiratorial and encouraging.

When Bob arrived they pulled him into the hut. They needed his co-operation.

"You all right now?" he asked Don. "You were fairly seedy last night."

"Fine, thanks. It all sorted itself." With a great deal of help from others, he might have added, but Bob needn't know about that. "Bob. Will you do us a favour, please? Our parents are coming about eleven. It's make or break, Bob. If it's break, they'll take me away. Probably Mark too. I know you'd normally be polite and hospitable and come to chat to them. But we want them by themselves first. Please, would you steer clear until we bring them to you? And if possible keep other people out of the way too?"

"If that will help, of course I will. And good luck!"

He meant it with all his heart. He repented, now, of the half-heartedness he had shown yesterday, of the reservations that had bugged him. He could weather whatever storm might break. It was the boys who mattered, not him.

They mattered particularly because they matched. He had some experience in judging partnerships, in telling which were right and which were wrong. As a solicitor he had met plenty of examples of mismatches. As a father he had foreseen, correctly, that the marriage of one of his daughters would work and the other would end in divorce. All his instincts told him that the boys were made for each other. If they were torn apart now, there would be no justice in the world.

They set to, shovelling more mud out of their new bedroom. After a while Don, sweating despite the breeze and still a little morning-after-the-night-before, stopped and leant on his spade.

"God, this is hard work. But we're not doing it for us, are we, Mag? Or even for Bob. Not really. We're doing it for him." He nodded towards the temple, where Maponus' head was visible above the wall, watching them.

Mark thought about it. "Yes, I see what you mean. We owe it to him."

By quarter to eleven they were keeping an eye on the top of the slope where the visitors would appear. Better be early than late. They downed tools and washed. On their way to the temple they passed Hilary and Jeff, who gave them an amused glance - the boys suddenly realised they were holding hands - followed by a kindly smile, as if they had been a boy and girl. Well! If that was they way things were ... They had expected to be on tenterhooks, waiting for the crunch, but they weren't. Everyone, everything, was smiling on them. They didn't know how it was going to work, but they knew it would work.

Then a qualm crept to the surface. "We said in that note that it's natural and god-given. We know it is. He" - nodding at the god - "said so. We've got faith in him. But they've got their own faith. A different one. I hope that's not going to be shattered. Their jobs depend on it. If they lost it, it would lead to all kinds of complications."

"And if his cult was suppressed by Christians, he can't feel very kindly towards them."

No sooner had they said that than they realised they could trust him to pitch it, whatever it was going to be, at the right level. To confirm their own trust in each other, they hugged and kissed, without concealment. They saw Miss Dinsdale watching them from fifty yards away, and waved at her. She waved back, smiling.

"Dum. It works here in the temple, and in the hut, and in the tent, and it sounds as if it works in the museum, with that Kevin and Harry. What happens when he's on public display there?"

Don took time to think the question through before breaking into a broad smile.

"God, yes, you're right! If people know about him, when they know about him, they'll come flocking!"

They mulled happily over the limitless implications. Then Mrs Prichard banged the tin tray which was her gong, and everyone else trundled down to the hut for elevenses. As if on cue, three heads came successively into sight on the skyline, bobbing up and down as their owners climbed the stile. There was a distant yelp and Don guessed that Mum had laddered her tights. As they came down the slope it was clear that they were not in a mellow frame of mind. They spotted the boys and veered towards the temple.

"Donald!" hissed Pop over the wall as they went round the portico. "If you think this shameless behaviour will succeed in affecting our attitude ..."

They came through the doorway and stopped dead. Mum clutched Pop's arm. They stared. They saw a Roman column surmounted by a carved head. They saw their sons standing close on either side, hands clasped behind the column. They saw their expressions, smiling and radiant. They saw six eyes in a row, like links in a chain - not a chain that shackles, but a chain that connects heaven and earth. For a long time they stared.

Then they turned to gaze wordlessly at each other, successively bewildered, enquiring, and reassured. They looked back at the three figures. They saw no trace there of the provocative, the lascivious or the triumphant; only the naked, tender face of love. As they assimilated their new-found knowledge, the scales fell from their eyes.

They were intelligent people, largely rational, but not wholly so because the Christian religion, like every other faith, steps beyond mere reason. They knew all about the road to Damascus. They were aware that revelation can be conveyed in surprising ways and unexpected places. They regarded it as above human comprehension and beyond human questioning.

Their revelation came to them without drama. It was accompanied by no great light shining from heaven, by no voice asking why they persecuted him. It came to them silently, as if transmitted by those six eyes which returned their gaze. But since they recognised only one god, it could only emanate from him. And they accepted it.

They opened their arms, and the boys rushed into them. Dad had not hugged his son for years.

"I think I understand now, Mark. I'm sorry it's taken me so long. You've been down in the dumps, haven't you? Was that because you're gay? And were being given a rough ride at school?"

Mark was too choked up to say much. He nodded. "It's been ... tough," was all he could get out.

"I'm sorry you couldn't come to me for help. But I know why. It's not your fault, it's mine. I wouldn't have sympathised, and you knew it. I thought all that sort of thing was wrong, and when the Muirs showed me your note up at the tents I was very angry. But now I've seen you happy for the first time since I don't know when. You and Don, happy together, obviously in love. And that doesn't seem in the least wrong, after all."

"Oh Don, we're sorry," Mum was saying at the same time. "We've been so short-sighted. We haven't understood. We didn't like what you and that boy did at Estepona. But you and Mark ... well, that's on a different plane. Now we've seen you together, that's obvious."

Don could not speak. But he smiled at them.

Pop reacted with typical pomposity but unusual emotion. "There you are. God fulfils himself in many ways. We admit that we have made a mistake, and you do not respond with a 'high time too' or 'I told you so'. Instead you reward us with a warmer smile than we have seen in years. Proof, if we need it, that your heart is in the right place. In every sense."

"And there was something else, Mark," Dad continued quietly, "that stopped you bringing your problems to me, wasn't there? We haven't been close enough. Ever since Mummy died, I haven't been able to give you the time you needed." He shook his head sadly. "Well, that may be a reason, but it's a very poor excuse. I'm sorry again. I really am. But now I'll be able to make up for being such a bad father. That's why I've come here today. To tell you what's going to happen."

"Yes, Don, we see it now. Your orientation is natural. Given by God. It is he that hath made us and not we ourselves. You are right, it cannot be altered. Which reminds me, may I use your mobile? I ought to phone Norton Malreward." Don had forgotten about that, and drew in a sharp breath. "Merely to tell them you will not be going after all. That was another misjudgement of ours."

Dad looked across at the Muirs and saw the archdeacon distracted by the mobile. "Don!" he called. "This concerns you as well. I've some news for Mark. For you too, now. I've got a new job. We're moving."

Both boys boggled in horror. "Dad! Where to? The other end of England?"

Dad laughed and became even more human. "Not quite that far. Still in this diocese. A living that's been vacant for months. Your father, Don, asked me to take it on, and yesterday I went to Wells, to the palace, and the bishop confirmed it. It has an assistant priest who shares the workload. That'll give me more time, for you."

"Dad! You're teasing us! Where?"

"The church is dedicated to St Thomas à Becket ..."

Don gasped.

"The vicarage is in Pinfold Lane ..."

"Pucklechurch!" yelled Don.

"That's right. And the vicarage and archdeaconry are next door to each other. And you'll both be at the same school."

The boys were beyond speech, again. Dad gathered both into a new hug.

"When will we be moving, Dad?" Mark asked after a while.

"Not till October or November."

Mark wilted. "So I stay at my old school till then?"

Dad divined his problem, and hesitated. He hadn't thought of that.

"Not very sensible to change schools in mid-term," put in Pop, having finished phoning. He exchanged a glance with Mum. "We will be only too delighted for you to stay with us until your father moves. Assuming that Don can put up with you."

"Pop!"

"That's very generous of you," said Dad, getting an emphatic nod from Mark. "Very generous indeed. It really would solve the problem very neatly. Thanks, Kenneth, thanks, Janet. We gladly accept. Meanwhile, Mark, I take it you're staying on here for the next fortnight? I thought so."

"Right, that's settled," said Pop with satisfaction. "Now, you promised to show us your latest finds, didn't you?"

Don and Mark dared not look at each other. In the space of a few minutes their parents' whole attitude had been turned on its head, without any fuss or bother, as if it was the most everyday thing in the world. Nor had they laid down any new laws or stuck up any new notices. It didn't seem to surprise them unduly, nor call for any explanation. It was as if their instructions had been 'You're wrong. The boys' line is right. Accept it, apologise, and follow it without argument.'

The boys felt dazed and weak at the knees. Although they knew their trust had been well-placed, the upshot was still mind-blowing, the relief colossal. But the whole extraordinary scene had been surreal. It had ended in anticlimax, and it was now over. A rapid gear-change was called for, as rapid as their parents'.

Don took a deep breath and tried to pull himself together. "OK. Well, you haven't seen the site before, Mr Bushby ..."

"I think you'd better call me Philip now, don't you?"

Don blinked. "Er, right. Well, we've got this octagonal temple ..." He explained the architecture and introduced Maponus.

"What a very fine piece of sculpture!" said Pop as they moved closer to examine him. Up to this point, their minds having been on other things, they'd had no chance to consider him as a work of art. Now, behind their backs, the boys could roll their eyes at each other in incredulous delight. "Not unlike the head of Antenociticus from Benwell, is it? Very Celtic. And very successful at imparting a sense of the divine. Do you know what his function was here?"

This was the next test. "Yes, we do, now. He was rather like Hymen, bringing couples together. There was an altar right here in the sanctuary - we'll show you, it's in the hut - which calls him coniugator, remember? Uniter. In this case he united young men who asked for his approval. He might say no, if they asked in lust not love. Another find here was a lead defixio. A couple had been refused permission, but disobeyed him. And they were cursed. But he might say yes, if they really were in love. Mark and I've been digging a bedroom in the hostel over there, and we found a graffito made by a couple who had got Maponus' approval."

The parents nodded understandingly, and passed the test.

"That couple got caught there when the river flooded. They escaped, but without their clothes. Which we found on the floor. Let's go over there next."

The parents did not bother to look back at the god. But Mark and Don did. As they left the temple they were hand in hand again and Bob, watching anxiously from the far side of the site, saw that they were. He breathed a mighty sigh of relief.

"Here's the hostel. There's not much to see at the moment. We're backfilling the first bedroom now - this one here. The graffito's been taken into the museum, and the clothes are in Bradford, being conserved. They're very excited about them ..."

So they progressed around the site. All the right questions were asked, and answered. Elevenses were over and people had drifted back to work, and the boys finished by ushering their parents to the site hut. There Bob was awaiting them, and greeted them warmly. Mark introduced Dad, and behind all their backs Don gave Bob an exultant two-handed thumbs-up. They inspected the altar - with a learned discussion about that interesting word coniugator - and the garum amphora and other finds. Nobody tempted providence by mentioning, let alone showing, the phallic knife or the fascinum. And the defixio was still in Oxford.

"Is it too late, or can we offer you a mug of coffee?"

Dad looked at his watch. "Oh Lord, is that the time? Thanks, Mr Gill, but not for me. I've got a wedding at Ubley at half past two. I must be off."

"We ought to go too," decided the Muirs. They all made their farewells.

"We'll come up to the camping field to see you off," said Don. "You go ahead and we'll catch you up in a moment. We just want a quick word with Bob."

With the parents out of earshot, Bob pretended to mop his brow. "Whew! So it's all right?"

"Everything's all right!" They were on top of the world. "Thanks, Bob!"

"What did you say to them?"

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing. They had a divine revelation, that's all. Look, Bob, we'll come straight back from seeing them off, and then we'll dig till we drop. We owe it."

"Oh, and Bob," Mark called over his shoulder, "I will be staying on for the next two weeks. Assuming you want me." He didn't wait for an answer.

Perplexed, but in high pleasure, Bob watched the boys run back to the adults, and the five of them walk up towards the stile. Mark and his father were side by side, a hand on each other's shoulder. Don was between his parents, holding their hands. They disappeared over the brow.

Bob lit his pipe and ambled across the site. He was moved by this display of affection - most teenage boys would rather die than do that in public. He was also infinitely relieved, for he had fully expected the heavens to fall. Above all, he was sorely puzzled. He stood outside the temple, puffing his pipe, ruminating, chasing elusive thoughts. He was not a religious man. Divine revelation, eh? But from what divinity? And what did Don and Mark owe, and to whom?

The boys reappeared on the skyline and started down the slope towards him, hand in hand, clearly in seventh heaven. Moved by some impulse, Bob went into the sanctuary and contemplated the god. Maybe it was only the shadow of a cloudlet flitting across the sun, but Maponus seemed to wink at him. It was enough to give Bob his answer, and a glimpse of the immense design. Yes, there was justice in the world. And not merely mortal justice, but divine.

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