Happy Holidays, onetbls! Part 3
Dec. 16th, 2017 05:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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go_exchangeA Visual Treatise on the Material Remains of Witches in the County of Lancaster
Part 3
Day two began much the same as the first. Anathema cycled over to the camp site, signed in, dumped her belongings on the table. Tea, breakfast, morning meeting. They'd apparently started test pits at the two new sites, since there were apparently meaningful blobs on the Geophysics survey printouts. At 11, her name was called and Anathema reported for duty to Mark, Melissa, Clarissa, and the other one, whose name Anathema remained hazy on.
This morning, they wanted her to run a scene talking about the specifics of the Pendle witches, to try and add a little narrative to the episode.
"Something exciting," Mark told her. "Give us a good people story."
"I think I can manage," Anathema replied. "I've got some sources here, there's some family trees…"
"Excellent!" he said. "Melissa, can you go find Emily? Tell her that she's got to be back here to run that scene Dennis wants."
"Yes, sir," said Melissa, taking a swig from her Thermos and jogging off.
Emily - the assistant director, who Anathema had met yesterday - arrived some ten minutes later, with her camera crew and, of course, Tony Robinson. She wasn't star-struck, exactly, because he was very nice and very normal, but it was nonetheless very strange. It was almost like being psychic, or like having the Book had been - she knew lots about them, she knew what they were like, and they knew nothing about her, didn't even know that she knew. The upside was that when it came to that, Anathema at least had plenty of practice pretending otherwise.
Mark and Emily conferred for a few minutes, while Tony and the camera crew joked around. Eventually the discussion broke up, having come to some decision, and Emily came back over to them.
"Right. You had some sources?" she asked Anathema.
"Ah, yes. Over at my table… Is it okay if…?" asked Anathema, hands twisting about.
Emily nodded. "As long as the light's good. Should be fine, right?"
The cameraman made a vague noise of agreement.
"Good, good. Let's go get that hammered out, then," said Emily. "Where's your table?"
They got set up at her sad, makeshift little desk, moving bags and folders and reports around until it looked like Anathema had been hard at work for a day and a half rather than mostly reading novels and waiting around. She walked the AD and Tony through what she wanted to talk about - the two feuding families, the poverty of the area, Catholicism, and the Malkin Tower meeting. Emily nixed the Catholicism - she could mention it briefly, but it was a big topic and not one to throw in lightly, and anyway bringing up religious conflicts, even centuries-old ones, was not a recommended subject. But the rest she gave her approval to, and set the cameras rolling.
"Hello there, Anathema," began Tony Robinson. "How's things here at the research camp?"
"Great," she replied. "Hard at work here, trying to sort out the trial records."
"Sounds exciting. What have you learned? What exactly were the Devices accused of?"
Anathema spread some large photographs of book pages out in front of her. "So the trials happened in August 1612, and they were recorded by a clerk named Thomas Potts, who wrote a book about them titled The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the County of Lancaster. It's a really remarkable book, and it's the main source for the information we do know about the Pendle witches."
"Wonderful?" said Tony. "Was it really something to be excited about?"
"Well, 'wonderful' meant something a little different in the seventeenth century," Anathema explained. "It was more of a sense of shock or awe, rather than something delightful or good."
She continued. "What's interesting about the Pendle witches is that it's really the story of two families having a row that gets blown up into this big event. It starts with a woman named Alizon Device, who tries to buy pins from a man named John Law. He refuses to sell them to her, because they were often used for witchcraft, and because the Device family had a reputation for being involved in the occult. The matriarch of the family, Elizabeth Demdike, had been known as a witch in the area for nearly fifty years."
"And were people okay with that?" Tony asked. "If being a witch was illegal…"
"It wasn't so much being a witch as using witchcraft for harm. Ordinary people were more than happy to consult so-called witches for healing or protection, but when things went bad, it was then that people started to blame witches." Anathema went on, explaining the feuding Device and Chattox families, the meeting at Malkin Tower, and the charges laid against them.
"The very saddest part, to me," said Anathema, "is that the prosecution's star witness was not only a child, but nine-year-old Jennet Device, Elizabeth Device's daughter and sibling to Alizon and James. She testified against her family, and against most of the accused, identifying people she had seen at Malkin Tower that night."
"That is sad. She testified against her own mother?" asked Tony, incredulously.
"She did," Anathema confirmed. "A number of the accused witches actually spoke against their own family members in their confessions - which were not reliable as they came from torture, mostly."
"Awful," Tony said. "What happened to her?"
"We're not sure," she answered. "At the 1634 sitting of the Lancaster assizes, a woman named Jennet Device, who may be the same person, was tried for the murder by witchcraft of an Isabel Nutter, with the chief witness against her a ten-year-old boy."
"Was she hanged?"
"She was convicted, but the judges refused to sentence her to death. The case dragged on in appeals in London, where the boy admitted he lied, but even though four were pardoned, none of them were ever released and it's very likely that Jennet Device died in Lancaster Gaol."
"So she got her just desserts, in the end," concluded Tony.
Anathema frowned a little. "I'm afraid she very probably did."
"Cut!" yelled Emily. "That was good. Would you mind repeating some of the bits in the middle? The ending's very good, but you just got a bit rambly in the middle."
Anathema flushed. "Sorry."
"It's fine, we'll just re-do some of it and we can cut it together. So start with the bit about the two families, make a bit simpler. It's a lot of information."
"Okay. Sorry."
They had her repeat a few sections like that until they got what they wanted out of her. It was weird and a bit embarrassing, and kind of annoying at the end, when someone dropped something just as she was saying the important part, and they'd had to film it over again. But they got it done, and Emily thanked her, and Tony thanked her, and the whole group of them went off to go make someone else repeat the same three sentences over and over.
After that, Anathema was freed for lunch. It was catered again, although the sandwiches and salad had started to look a little soggy. She grabbed a cheese-and-tomato sandwich to go with the rather uninspired vegetable soup, and sat down to eat in the makeshift cafeteria, which was three tables awkwardly squeezed into the small kitchen.
"It's just frustrating, that's all," said one of the archaeologists. "Nothing really good's coming out. There's a wall at the Newchurch site, but it's probably just a barn."
"Better than the last dig, though," said another, this one a ginger man in a bright blue fleece. "The trenches haven't flooded."
"Not yet," said the first one - an Asian woman in a purple jumper - with foreboding in her voice. "The forecast says rain."
"The forecast always says rain," interjected a third, a blotchy-faced woman with her hair cut short and a dark green fleece. "If you don't like rain, go join the finds team."
"How's everything going, then?" asked Anathema, as she set about unwrapping the little crackers that came with the soup.
"Nothing good," said Sour Purple Jumper, whose face was just familiar enough that Anathema suspected she'd seen her on TV before.
"That's too bad," replied Anathema. "It's terribly boring here at the camp. I'd thought I might ask if I can go take a look at the digs this afternoon."
"Sure, sure," said the ginger. "Nothing good for us doesn't mean it's not interesting for everyone else."
"Actually," said Green Fleece. "You're the witch, right?"
Anathema grimaced a little into her soup. "Historical consultant, technically, but yes, I'm… Yes, it's my family's house. Was."
"Dennis would probably love footage of you walking around the sites." Dennis was the director, whom Anathema had met very briefly the previous day.
Green Fleece gestured with her fork. "Liven it up, since we're hardly doing anything exciting."
"Oh, well then," said Anathema. "Should I go find Mark, or…?"
"I'll let him know," said a man at the end of the table, rising and tidying up his rubbish. "I was going to go ask him about something, anyway."
"Alright then," she said, nodding. She was determined not to rush her lunch on the vague hope of something exciting. The stop-start, feast-famine rhythm of the set made Anathema a bit uneasy. She was used to working at her own schedule, whether that was slow and steady or intense and quick. Waiting around for other people to decide whether she had permission to do things or whether she was needed was surprisingly stressful.
In the end, there was no need to rush. Clarissa came to find her not long after Anathema returned to her table, to sit around reading a novel she'd sensibly thought to bring with her this morning. She confirmed that Dennis thought it was a good idea, and once again Anathema was herded off to the car park, this time to an SUV rather than a golf cart. There was a fine mist in the air, not quite a drizzle - more of a warning of the potential of proper precipitation - but Clarissa kept the wipers running anyway, and they made a dry, squeaking sound.
They drove only a few minutes before making their first stop just outside of Newchurch-in-Pendle. This, according to a large laminated sign with the Time Team logo on it, was Dig Site 1: Sadler's Farm. They parked the SUV in a laneway cluttered with other vehicles, and Clarissa led Anathema across the empty field towards the tent village that had sprung up around the trenches.
"Dennis!" Clarissa called as they approached. "Visitor for you."
"Excellent," shouted Dennis. He was a big man with a goatee and rimless glasses, wearing a dark green Time Team fleece. "Thanks, Clarissa."
He turned to Anathema and offered her one of his large hands to shake. "So you wanted to see what's going on at the digs, Miss Device?"
"I did," said Anathema. "It's been rather dull, and I thought that-"
"Yes, excellent. Have a look round, see what's happening. Let's take you over to Tony, we'll shoot some great footage, get you talking to the archaeologists. Where's Tony?" He took off walking at a brisk pace, and Anathema scrambled to catch up. "Tony!"
Tony Robinson emerged from one of the tents, turtle-like in his large jacket. "Hello, Dennis!"
"Back to work for you," said Dennis lightly. "I'd like to get some shots of you and Miss Device here talking about the digs. Ask her about her family, how she feels, how exciting it all is. Talk to Phil or Raksha if you can, get them to talk a bit about what's come up in the last couple of hours."
"All right," said Tony Robinson. (Anathema found it very difficult to refer to him by his first name only. She kept thinking of Newt's stupid laughter every time she saw his face.) "How's things, Anathema?"
"Boring," she said simply.
He laughed. "That's the way of film sets, I'm afraid. Lots of hurry up and wait."
"I'm learning," Anathema grumbled.
Dennis called the camera crew together. They were a pack of poncho-wearing ducklings, trailing after Dennis like he was their mother, or a human with tasty snacks in a bag. Except the tasty snacks in this case was Anathema, and Tony, and the archaeologists.
"Just act natural," Dennis told her, and she laughed. "Just walk around a bit, ask people questions. Or let Tony ask people questions if you feel uncomfortable. They're used to it, they know what to do."
"Alright," she said, immediately feeling her body freeze up into the least natural casual pose it could imagine.
"Speed."
"Rolling." Clap.
Anathema and Tony walked around the edges of the trenches, peering in on the archaeologists as they worked. Anathema kept her hands in her pockets, thankful for the rain; she just knew if she let them out, her hands would start doing some kind of stupid Casual Stroll swing and it would throw the whole thing off.
"What’s happening down there?" Tony called down into the trench.
The nearest archaeologist looked up. Anathema recognized her as the Asian woman with the purple jumper from lunch.
"Hello Raksha," said Tony. "Anything new for us?"
She shook her head. "Not much. As you can see, we've started to see some walls emerging-" Here she pointed at a few slightly darker areas in the earth, filled with smallish stones and mortar. "But there's really not a lot of solid evidence for what kind of structure this might be. If it was a cottage, we would expect to see more finds indicating human habitation, but we're just not seeing that, Tony."
"Hang on, I thought Phil showed me some pottery?"
"Yes, well," said Raksha, shaking her head from side to side. "That's been about it, really, and what we have isn't obviously the sort of pottery you'd expect from inside of a cottage. It could be from a bowl or jug used to carry milk, or animal feed, or something like that."
"That's too bad," Tony replied. "Anathema, what do you think?"
"Oh," she said, a bit stupidly. "I do think it's interesting."
As she said it, she thought about the walls, or what remained of them. "Do you think I could get closer to have a look?"
"Sure," said Raksha. "Just be careful stepping down, there you go. Over there. See that darker line? There's pretty clearly a foundation a building there, with seventeenth century stone fill and mortar."
Anathema stepped into the trench, and knelt down in the dirt. The walls really weren't much, but stone had a long memory. It could maybe… If she just…
She closed her eyes and ran her hands over the stones, listening with her mind as intently as she could. She could hear something, faintly, and there was a definite smell of something animal, but nothing very definite. Oh well, she thought. It was a worth a try.
Tony leaned down into the trench. "Find anything exciting there? Do you think your ancestors might have built that wall?"
"I can't say," Anathema replied. "It's all a bit vague."
Raksha raised an eyebrow at her, but went back to scraping at the section of wall she was working on. Tony leaned forward and offered Anathema his hand, and she climbed out of the shallow trench.
"Onwards?" he asked.
They all piled in Clarissa's SUV after that, and drove over to Blacko. Dig Sites 2 and 3 had been closed already, and Dig Site 4: Cross Gaits Inn, another field with another tent village, was being closed up as well by the time they arrived. At this site, too, there was little evidence of anything interesting, and they let Anathema stand around looking at things while they film Tony talking to an archaeologist about that decision. She tried getting a read off this site, touching the stones and some of the objects they've excavated, but she got little more than the usual psychic noise of people's lives. Nothing specific, nothing out of the ordinary, and certainly nothing at all like the waves of occult sensation she was used to from her family's objects. She so hoped to feel something, once she had the idea, that sensing the amassed energy from people simply living in a space wasn't as satisfactory as it normally was.
Dig Site 5 was at the Lower Black Moss Reservoir, which was back towards Newchurch, away from the village of Blacko. They had only got the geophys surveying finished there just before lunch, so the archaeologists were still setting up the trench by the time Anathema and the others arrived. They got to watch the digger cut into the grass, which Anathema had to admit was weirdly thrilling, although nowhere near as exciting as the archaeologists rushing about to get their fingers in the dirt seemed to think it was.
The cameras were still rolling when Anathema walked over to the lumpy remains of the structure they were investigating. It was little more than a pile of stones, but she thought she might try and get a read off them, anyway, while the archaeologists got to work scraping and sifting through the top layers of soil.
She knelt down, and ran her hands over the stones, brushing away some moss and leaves. The feeling came over her like a flash, a flicker of firelight and the scent of roasting meat. She heard laughter, and shouting, and urgent whispers, and a woman crying. Then she saw their faces; dark hair and green eyes, a nose, a chin. She didn't know the faces, but she knew their names: there Elizabeth, and there her mother; there was Alizon and James, with the sheep; and little Jennet, watching, who didn't know any better. She knew them all, could feel their echoes in their bones, the Devices and even Alice Nutter, Agnes' grandmother.
"Have you found something there, Anathema?"
And then suddenly Anathema was back in the twenty-first century, kneeling in damp grass with Tony Robinson of all people asking what she was doing.
"Is there anything exciting?" he asked again. The camera crew had followed him, she saw now, and she tried to put an expression on her face that looked something approaching normal.
She stood up and brushed off the knees of her jeans. "I'm just taking a look at some of the stones here."
Tony raised an eyebrow. "The archaeologists getting to you? Will they make you one of them yet?"
"No, no - well - sort of." She stumbled over her words. "I'm just trying to get a feel for the site, I suppose. Wondering whether this was the place. I have a… I have a feeling about this place, I think."
"Well, I think Phil and the team hope so. Seems like Pendle's been thoroughly cursed so far. Any record of that in your family histories?" he said, teasing.
"Not of that, no," Anathema replied. Agnes had written precious little of what came before her. She'd included an About the Author on the last page, which used to make Anathema laugh for how anachronistic it was. It had mentioned her place of birth (Roughlee, Lancashire), her late husband (Thomas Device), and her hobbies (brisk walks in the woods, knitting, and keeping fowls). It had said, in all eagerness, "Thys if the author's firft book."
Tony Robinson had said something else, she knew, and she thought she might have replied. She didn't remember.
This was what Anathema hated the most about being psychic, really. Knowing things beyond evidence, with a certainty she could never honestly attest to in any report. She liked the knowing. She would always like the knowing, having spent so long with the future mapped out so precisely, so exactly, so definite, more so than any Device before her. Uncertainty made her anxious; it reminded her of the time after that final day, how adrift she was. Do you want to be a descendant for the rest of your life?
She hadn't, and yet… It had been so uncertain. She'd sought routine so desperately, had gone back to school to get her PhD for real this time (which had been a very embarrassing day for her, explaining she'd lied as much as Newt had, the day they met). That had led to research, which led to the business, which led to the Shadwell donation, and it had all, once again, circled back to here, this place. Devices and Nutters, witches and witch-finders. Apparently one couldn't decide to just stop being a descendant.
They took her back to the base camp in Newchurch, afterwards. It was weird, watching them dig and hoping they'd find the proof she already knew. She almost felt like she'd fast-forwarded a day or so, that she'd seen the end of the episode before they had. It was strange, really, and made her glad that her clients usually already expected a yes or a no; that the object was out of the ground and there was nothing Anathema could say or do that she couldn't either delete or hastily attribute to some obscure source in her personal library.
The rest of the day passed in a haze. She threw herself back into her novel, to try and distract herself. She called Newt at one point, and needed to go hide around the back of the building because he kept making her laugh. She gave in and took a nap, for a while, until Melissa shook her awake and told her there was a fresh batch of snacks in the kitchen. Around 6:30, Mark called the shoot for the evening. That too was a strange experience, standing around while Mark talked about doing cleanup on the Sadler's Farm site and the closing of site 4. They would be putting all their effort tomorrow on site 5, the Lower Black Moss Reservoir site, which they'd just finished cleaning up the surface, he said, and it was looking promising already with period-appropriate pottery finds, to which Marguerite whooped loudly. Then they were dismissed, and Gavin hopped up on the crate to shout that there'd be rounds at the pub on Phil, because someone had lost a bet, and they should all take advantage.
Anathema had laughed with the others and cycled back, but by the time she was back at the inn, her head was pounding. She begged off when Melissa asked her if she was coming, claiming she had a migraine. It was easier to explain than post-psychic energy hangover.
"I really shouldn't," she said, rubbing at her temples. "Sorry."
"It's alright," Melissa replied. "Anything I can get you? Aspirin? Hot water bottle? Discreet pint to go?"
Anathema laughed, but waved her away. "I'm fine, it's normal. Go on, say hi to the others for me."
"If you say so," said Melissa, skeptical.
"I do."
With that she went, leaving Anathema to change into her pyjamas (a very attractive combo of flannel pants and oversized t-shirt) and crawl into bed. She dug out her snacks, opened a bag of cheese and onion crisps, and flipped channels until she found something light. Ghosts, she found, didn't usually stand up to the power of potatoes and panel shows.
Next: Day 3! (Part 4)
Part 3
Day two began much the same as the first. Anathema cycled over to the camp site, signed in, dumped her belongings on the table. Tea, breakfast, morning meeting. They'd apparently started test pits at the two new sites, since there were apparently meaningful blobs on the Geophysics survey printouts. At 11, her name was called and Anathema reported for duty to Mark, Melissa, Clarissa, and the other one, whose name Anathema remained hazy on.
This morning, they wanted her to run a scene talking about the specifics of the Pendle witches, to try and add a little narrative to the episode.
"Something exciting," Mark told her. "Give us a good people story."
"I think I can manage," Anathema replied. "I've got some sources here, there's some family trees…"
"Excellent!" he said. "Melissa, can you go find Emily? Tell her that she's got to be back here to run that scene Dennis wants."
"Yes, sir," said Melissa, taking a swig from her Thermos and jogging off.
Emily - the assistant director, who Anathema had met yesterday - arrived some ten minutes later, with her camera crew and, of course, Tony Robinson. She wasn't star-struck, exactly, because he was very nice and very normal, but it was nonetheless very strange. It was almost like being psychic, or like having the Book had been - she knew lots about them, she knew what they were like, and they knew nothing about her, didn't even know that she knew. The upside was that when it came to that, Anathema at least had plenty of practice pretending otherwise.
Mark and Emily conferred for a few minutes, while Tony and the camera crew joked around. Eventually the discussion broke up, having come to some decision, and Emily came back over to them.
"Right. You had some sources?" she asked Anathema.
"Ah, yes. Over at my table… Is it okay if…?" asked Anathema, hands twisting about.
Emily nodded. "As long as the light's good. Should be fine, right?"
The cameraman made a vague noise of agreement.
"Good, good. Let's go get that hammered out, then," said Emily. "Where's your table?"
They got set up at her sad, makeshift little desk, moving bags and folders and reports around until it looked like Anathema had been hard at work for a day and a half rather than mostly reading novels and waiting around. She walked the AD and Tony through what she wanted to talk about - the two feuding families, the poverty of the area, Catholicism, and the Malkin Tower meeting. Emily nixed the Catholicism - she could mention it briefly, but it was a big topic and not one to throw in lightly, and anyway bringing up religious conflicts, even centuries-old ones, was not a recommended subject. But the rest she gave her approval to, and set the cameras rolling.
"Hello there, Anathema," began Tony Robinson. "How's things here at the research camp?"
"Great," she replied. "Hard at work here, trying to sort out the trial records."
"Sounds exciting. What have you learned? What exactly were the Devices accused of?"
Anathema spread some large photographs of book pages out in front of her. "So the trials happened in August 1612, and they were recorded by a clerk named Thomas Potts, who wrote a book about them titled The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the County of Lancaster. It's a really remarkable book, and it's the main source for the information we do know about the Pendle witches."
"Wonderful?" said Tony. "Was it really something to be excited about?"
"Well, 'wonderful' meant something a little different in the seventeenth century," Anathema explained. "It was more of a sense of shock or awe, rather than something delightful or good."
She continued. "What's interesting about the Pendle witches is that it's really the story of two families having a row that gets blown up into this big event. It starts with a woman named Alizon Device, who tries to buy pins from a man named John Law. He refuses to sell them to her, because they were often used for witchcraft, and because the Device family had a reputation for being involved in the occult. The matriarch of the family, Elizabeth Demdike, had been known as a witch in the area for nearly fifty years."
"And were people okay with that?" Tony asked. "If being a witch was illegal…"
"It wasn't so much being a witch as using witchcraft for harm. Ordinary people were more than happy to consult so-called witches for healing or protection, but when things went bad, it was then that people started to blame witches." Anathema went on, explaining the feuding Device and Chattox families, the meeting at Malkin Tower, and the charges laid against them.
"The very saddest part, to me," said Anathema, "is that the prosecution's star witness was not only a child, but nine-year-old Jennet Device, Elizabeth Device's daughter and sibling to Alizon and James. She testified against her family, and against most of the accused, identifying people she had seen at Malkin Tower that night."
"That is sad. She testified against her own mother?" asked Tony, incredulously.
"She did," Anathema confirmed. "A number of the accused witches actually spoke against their own family members in their confessions - which were not reliable as they came from torture, mostly."
"Awful," Tony said. "What happened to her?"
"We're not sure," she answered. "At the 1634 sitting of the Lancaster assizes, a woman named Jennet Device, who may be the same person, was tried for the murder by witchcraft of an Isabel Nutter, with the chief witness against her a ten-year-old boy."
"Was she hanged?"
"She was convicted, but the judges refused to sentence her to death. The case dragged on in appeals in London, where the boy admitted he lied, but even though four were pardoned, none of them were ever released and it's very likely that Jennet Device died in Lancaster Gaol."
"So she got her just desserts, in the end," concluded Tony.
Anathema frowned a little. "I'm afraid she very probably did."
"Cut!" yelled Emily. "That was good. Would you mind repeating some of the bits in the middle? The ending's very good, but you just got a bit rambly in the middle."
Anathema flushed. "Sorry."
"It's fine, we'll just re-do some of it and we can cut it together. So start with the bit about the two families, make a bit simpler. It's a lot of information."
"Okay. Sorry."
They had her repeat a few sections like that until they got what they wanted out of her. It was weird and a bit embarrassing, and kind of annoying at the end, when someone dropped something just as she was saying the important part, and they'd had to film it over again. But they got it done, and Emily thanked her, and Tony thanked her, and the whole group of them went off to go make someone else repeat the same three sentences over and over.
After that, Anathema was freed for lunch. It was catered again, although the sandwiches and salad had started to look a little soggy. She grabbed a cheese-and-tomato sandwich to go with the rather uninspired vegetable soup, and sat down to eat in the makeshift cafeteria, which was three tables awkwardly squeezed into the small kitchen.
"It's just frustrating, that's all," said one of the archaeologists. "Nothing really good's coming out. There's a wall at the Newchurch site, but it's probably just a barn."
"Better than the last dig, though," said another, this one a ginger man in a bright blue fleece. "The trenches haven't flooded."
"Not yet," said the first one - an Asian woman in a purple jumper - with foreboding in her voice. "The forecast says rain."
"The forecast always says rain," interjected a third, a blotchy-faced woman with her hair cut short and a dark green fleece. "If you don't like rain, go join the finds team."
"How's everything going, then?" asked Anathema, as she set about unwrapping the little crackers that came with the soup.
"Nothing good," said Sour Purple Jumper, whose face was just familiar enough that Anathema suspected she'd seen her on TV before.
"That's too bad," replied Anathema. "It's terribly boring here at the camp. I'd thought I might ask if I can go take a look at the digs this afternoon."
"Sure, sure," said the ginger. "Nothing good for us doesn't mean it's not interesting for everyone else."
"Actually," said Green Fleece. "You're the witch, right?"
Anathema grimaced a little into her soup. "Historical consultant, technically, but yes, I'm… Yes, it's my family's house. Was."
"Dennis would probably love footage of you walking around the sites." Dennis was the director, whom Anathema had met very briefly the previous day.
Green Fleece gestured with her fork. "Liven it up, since we're hardly doing anything exciting."
"Oh, well then," said Anathema. "Should I go find Mark, or…?"
"I'll let him know," said a man at the end of the table, rising and tidying up his rubbish. "I was going to go ask him about something, anyway."
"Alright then," she said, nodding. She was determined not to rush her lunch on the vague hope of something exciting. The stop-start, feast-famine rhythm of the set made Anathema a bit uneasy. She was used to working at her own schedule, whether that was slow and steady or intense and quick. Waiting around for other people to decide whether she had permission to do things or whether she was needed was surprisingly stressful.
In the end, there was no need to rush. Clarissa came to find her not long after Anathema returned to her table, to sit around reading a novel she'd sensibly thought to bring with her this morning. She confirmed that Dennis thought it was a good idea, and once again Anathema was herded off to the car park, this time to an SUV rather than a golf cart. There was a fine mist in the air, not quite a drizzle - more of a warning of the potential of proper precipitation - but Clarissa kept the wipers running anyway, and they made a dry, squeaking sound.
They drove only a few minutes before making their first stop just outside of Newchurch-in-Pendle. This, according to a large laminated sign with the Time Team logo on it, was Dig Site 1: Sadler's Farm. They parked the SUV in a laneway cluttered with other vehicles, and Clarissa led Anathema across the empty field towards the tent village that had sprung up around the trenches.
"Dennis!" Clarissa called as they approached. "Visitor for you."
"Excellent," shouted Dennis. He was a big man with a goatee and rimless glasses, wearing a dark green Time Team fleece. "Thanks, Clarissa."
He turned to Anathema and offered her one of his large hands to shake. "So you wanted to see what's going on at the digs, Miss Device?"
"I did," said Anathema. "It's been rather dull, and I thought that-"
"Yes, excellent. Have a look round, see what's happening. Let's take you over to Tony, we'll shoot some great footage, get you talking to the archaeologists. Where's Tony?" He took off walking at a brisk pace, and Anathema scrambled to catch up. "Tony!"
Tony Robinson emerged from one of the tents, turtle-like in his large jacket. "Hello, Dennis!"
"Back to work for you," said Dennis lightly. "I'd like to get some shots of you and Miss Device here talking about the digs. Ask her about her family, how she feels, how exciting it all is. Talk to Phil or Raksha if you can, get them to talk a bit about what's come up in the last couple of hours."
"All right," said Tony Robinson. (Anathema found it very difficult to refer to him by his first name only. She kept thinking of Newt's stupid laughter every time she saw his face.) "How's things, Anathema?"
"Boring," she said simply.
He laughed. "That's the way of film sets, I'm afraid. Lots of hurry up and wait."
"I'm learning," Anathema grumbled.
Dennis called the camera crew together. They were a pack of poncho-wearing ducklings, trailing after Dennis like he was their mother, or a human with tasty snacks in a bag. Except the tasty snacks in this case was Anathema, and Tony, and the archaeologists.
"Just act natural," Dennis told her, and she laughed. "Just walk around a bit, ask people questions. Or let Tony ask people questions if you feel uncomfortable. They're used to it, they know what to do."
"Alright," she said, immediately feeling her body freeze up into the least natural casual pose it could imagine.
"Speed."
"Rolling." Clap.
Anathema and Tony walked around the edges of the trenches, peering in on the archaeologists as they worked. Anathema kept her hands in her pockets, thankful for the rain; she just knew if she let them out, her hands would start doing some kind of stupid Casual Stroll swing and it would throw the whole thing off.
"What’s happening down there?" Tony called down into the trench.
The nearest archaeologist looked up. Anathema recognized her as the Asian woman with the purple jumper from lunch.
"Hello Raksha," said Tony. "Anything new for us?"
She shook her head. "Not much. As you can see, we've started to see some walls emerging-" Here she pointed at a few slightly darker areas in the earth, filled with smallish stones and mortar. "But there's really not a lot of solid evidence for what kind of structure this might be. If it was a cottage, we would expect to see more finds indicating human habitation, but we're just not seeing that, Tony."
"Hang on, I thought Phil showed me some pottery?"
"Yes, well," said Raksha, shaking her head from side to side. "That's been about it, really, and what we have isn't obviously the sort of pottery you'd expect from inside of a cottage. It could be from a bowl or jug used to carry milk, or animal feed, or something like that."
"That's too bad," Tony replied. "Anathema, what do you think?"
"Oh," she said, a bit stupidly. "I do think it's interesting."
As she said it, she thought about the walls, or what remained of them. "Do you think I could get closer to have a look?"
"Sure," said Raksha. "Just be careful stepping down, there you go. Over there. See that darker line? There's pretty clearly a foundation a building there, with seventeenth century stone fill and mortar."
Anathema stepped into the trench, and knelt down in the dirt. The walls really weren't much, but stone had a long memory. It could maybe… If she just…
She closed her eyes and ran her hands over the stones, listening with her mind as intently as she could. She could hear something, faintly, and there was a definite smell of something animal, but nothing very definite. Oh well, she thought. It was a worth a try.
Tony leaned down into the trench. "Find anything exciting there? Do you think your ancestors might have built that wall?"
"I can't say," Anathema replied. "It's all a bit vague."
Raksha raised an eyebrow at her, but went back to scraping at the section of wall she was working on. Tony leaned forward and offered Anathema his hand, and she climbed out of the shallow trench.
"Onwards?" he asked.
They all piled in Clarissa's SUV after that, and drove over to Blacko. Dig Sites 2 and 3 had been closed already, and Dig Site 4: Cross Gaits Inn, another field with another tent village, was being closed up as well by the time they arrived. At this site, too, there was little evidence of anything interesting, and they let Anathema stand around looking at things while they film Tony talking to an archaeologist about that decision. She tried getting a read off this site, touching the stones and some of the objects they've excavated, but she got little more than the usual psychic noise of people's lives. Nothing specific, nothing out of the ordinary, and certainly nothing at all like the waves of occult sensation she was used to from her family's objects. She so hoped to feel something, once she had the idea, that sensing the amassed energy from people simply living in a space wasn't as satisfactory as it normally was.
Dig Site 5 was at the Lower Black Moss Reservoir, which was back towards Newchurch, away from the village of Blacko. They had only got the geophys surveying finished there just before lunch, so the archaeologists were still setting up the trench by the time Anathema and the others arrived. They got to watch the digger cut into the grass, which Anathema had to admit was weirdly thrilling, although nowhere near as exciting as the archaeologists rushing about to get their fingers in the dirt seemed to think it was.
The cameras were still rolling when Anathema walked over to the lumpy remains of the structure they were investigating. It was little more than a pile of stones, but she thought she might try and get a read off them, anyway, while the archaeologists got to work scraping and sifting through the top layers of soil.
She knelt down, and ran her hands over the stones, brushing away some moss and leaves. The feeling came over her like a flash, a flicker of firelight and the scent of roasting meat. She heard laughter, and shouting, and urgent whispers, and a woman crying. Then she saw their faces; dark hair and green eyes, a nose, a chin. She didn't know the faces, but she knew their names: there Elizabeth, and there her mother; there was Alizon and James, with the sheep; and little Jennet, watching, who didn't know any better. She knew them all, could feel their echoes in their bones, the Devices and even Alice Nutter, Agnes' grandmother.
"Have you found something there, Anathema?"
And then suddenly Anathema was back in the twenty-first century, kneeling in damp grass with Tony Robinson of all people asking what she was doing.
"Is there anything exciting?" he asked again. The camera crew had followed him, she saw now, and she tried to put an expression on her face that looked something approaching normal.
She stood up and brushed off the knees of her jeans. "I'm just taking a look at some of the stones here."
Tony raised an eyebrow. "The archaeologists getting to you? Will they make you one of them yet?"
"No, no - well - sort of." She stumbled over her words. "I'm just trying to get a feel for the site, I suppose. Wondering whether this was the place. I have a… I have a feeling about this place, I think."
"Well, I think Phil and the team hope so. Seems like Pendle's been thoroughly cursed so far. Any record of that in your family histories?" he said, teasing.
"Not of that, no," Anathema replied. Agnes had written precious little of what came before her. She'd included an About the Author on the last page, which used to make Anathema laugh for how anachronistic it was. It had mentioned her place of birth (Roughlee, Lancashire), her late husband (Thomas Device), and her hobbies (brisk walks in the woods, knitting, and keeping fowls). It had said, in all eagerness, "Thys if the author's firft book."
Tony Robinson had said something else, she knew, and she thought she might have replied. She didn't remember.
This was what Anathema hated the most about being psychic, really. Knowing things beyond evidence, with a certainty she could never honestly attest to in any report. She liked the knowing. She would always like the knowing, having spent so long with the future mapped out so precisely, so exactly, so definite, more so than any Device before her. Uncertainty made her anxious; it reminded her of the time after that final day, how adrift she was. Do you want to be a descendant for the rest of your life?
She hadn't, and yet… It had been so uncertain. She'd sought routine so desperately, had gone back to school to get her PhD for real this time (which had been a very embarrassing day for her, explaining she'd lied as much as Newt had, the day they met). That had led to research, which led to the business, which led to the Shadwell donation, and it had all, once again, circled back to here, this place. Devices and Nutters, witches and witch-finders. Apparently one couldn't decide to just stop being a descendant.
They took her back to the base camp in Newchurch, afterwards. It was weird, watching them dig and hoping they'd find the proof she already knew. She almost felt like she'd fast-forwarded a day or so, that she'd seen the end of the episode before they had. It was strange, really, and made her glad that her clients usually already expected a yes or a no; that the object was out of the ground and there was nothing Anathema could say or do that she couldn't either delete or hastily attribute to some obscure source in her personal library.
The rest of the day passed in a haze. She threw herself back into her novel, to try and distract herself. She called Newt at one point, and needed to go hide around the back of the building because he kept making her laugh. She gave in and took a nap, for a while, until Melissa shook her awake and told her there was a fresh batch of snacks in the kitchen. Around 6:30, Mark called the shoot for the evening. That too was a strange experience, standing around while Mark talked about doing cleanup on the Sadler's Farm site and the closing of site 4. They would be putting all their effort tomorrow on site 5, the Lower Black Moss Reservoir site, which they'd just finished cleaning up the surface, he said, and it was looking promising already with period-appropriate pottery finds, to which Marguerite whooped loudly. Then they were dismissed, and Gavin hopped up on the crate to shout that there'd be rounds at the pub on Phil, because someone had lost a bet, and they should all take advantage.
Anathema had laughed with the others and cycled back, but by the time she was back at the inn, her head was pounding. She begged off when Melissa asked her if she was coming, claiming she had a migraine. It was easier to explain than post-psychic energy hangover.
"I really shouldn't," she said, rubbing at her temples. "Sorry."
"It's alright," Melissa replied. "Anything I can get you? Aspirin? Hot water bottle? Discreet pint to go?"
Anathema laughed, but waved her away. "I'm fine, it's normal. Go on, say hi to the others for me."
"If you say so," said Melissa, skeptical.
"I do."
With that she went, leaving Anathema to change into her pyjamas (a very attractive combo of flannel pants and oversized t-shirt) and crawl into bed. She dug out her snacks, opened a bag of cheese and onion crisps, and flipped channels until she found something light. Ghosts, she found, didn't usually stand up to the power of potatoes and panel shows.
Next: Day 3! (Part 4)
(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-17 12:27 pm (UTC)But I realized what is perhaps something to consider for the future. Everyone else in the scene is actually described with physical descriptors that make them unique, like a blotchy face or ginger hair. These characters are presumably white since that’s generally the “average” that people write (though noticeably, never actually mention). But the Asian woman is just identified as “Asian”, which is... With how nearly everyone else is described with an actual physical descriptor unique to them, it makes it seem like that’s her one encompassing physical trait. But of course, each Asian person looks uniquely different from one another like any other person. You wouldn’t go through the fic describing every white character as simply “white” with no other descriptors save what they’re wearing :p
So something to consider for the future, perhaps something like “an Asian woman with a high ponytail/an eyebrow piercing/a large mole and a purple sweater,” would be good! I hope you don’t take this as an attack, I really did enjoy the fic and it was very well written! I simply hope this can be helpful.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-17 02:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-18 03:27 pm (UTC)The funny thing for me is that I have never watched Time Team, so I'm actually struggling to remember that most of the people in this fic are "real." It makes for an interesting reading experience.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-20 12:56 am (UTC)Also the comparisons of ducklings and turtles for the people in coats was funny :>
Oh, I'm so sad about the young children in the witch trials. It really is unpleasant if you think about it too seriously :
(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-20 07:16 pm (UTC)And again, I like the history of witches and Anathema's family! I LOVED Agnes's "About the Author" section, it was adorable. And the paragraph about what Anathema had done after the Apocawasn't was cool too, it all seemed like what she would do.
It's really nice how Newt and Anathema always make each other laugh :)
Great last sentence!