Amanderella and the Marduk Affair Chapter 8.

Chapter Eight.

 

Old Stones.

 

Amanderella unfolded the Ordnance Survey map again.

This time she didn’t look at the contour lines. She looked at the names. Her finger paused.

Pennycill Hill. 

A harmless little English name. Except now she could see the Welsh beneath it, like a shadow.

Pen‑y‑Cylle. 

The real name. The lost name.

The name Marduk had followed.

Dotty watched Amanderella’s finger trace the outline. “You’re thinking of going up there, aren’t you? Up the hill.”

Amanderella nodded once.

Dotty wrung her hands. “I can’t come. I can’t leave the Library while it’s open. Not even for five minutes.”

“I know,” said Amanderella.

Dotty hesitated. “There is a path, you know. People use it to walk their dogs. It goes up the back of Pennycill Hill, past the gorse bushes. If you follow it all the way, it comes out by those old stones on the top. Everyone says they’re the remains of an Iron Age hillfort.”

Amanderella’s expression didn’t change. She gazed at a point somewhere behind Dotty’s shoulder.

“Old stones,” she repeated quietly.

Dotty nodded. “They’re nothing special. Just a few walls and a lump of earth. But they’ve been there forever.”

Amanderella folded the map with great care.

“Then that,” she said, “is where I’ll start.”

She stepped out of the Library and into the bright late‑morning light. The air had that clear, sharp feeling it sometimes gets before midday, when the sun is up but not yet warm. A gull wheeled overhead, calling once before gliding out towards the harbour.

She paused on the pavement, letting her eyes adjust. The folded map was tucked neatly under her arm, held as if it were a compass, or a clue she had not yet fully solved.

Pennycill Hill rose above the town, green and familiar. From here she could see the lower slope, dotted with sheep and the odd clump of gorse. A dog barked somewhere up the lane. A tractor hummed faintly in the distance. Ordinary sounds. Ordinary morning.

Amanderella began to walk.

Her steps were steady and unhurried. She passed the bakery, where the smell of warm bread drifted into the street. She passed the post office, where Mr Hughes was sweeping the step as he always did at this time of day. He nodded to her. She nodded back.

At the end of the row of houses, the pavement narrowed into a lane. The hedges grew taller here, thick with bramble and hawthorn. A blackbird hopped along the top of one, flicking its tail.

Amanderella turned up the lane.

The hill looked larger from this angle, its sides rising in long, gentle folds. The path Dotty had mentioned began just beyond a wooden gate, worn smooth by years of dog‑walkers pushing it open with one hand while juggling leads and biscuits with the other.

Amanderella unlatched the gate and stepped through.

The path climbed steadily, curving behind a stand of gorse bushes. The yellow flowers were just beginning to open, giving off a faint coconut scent. The ground was springy underfoot, patched with moss and last year’s dry grass.

Halfway up, she paused and looked back.

Pentegfawr lay below her, neat and small, the rooftops shining in the sunlight. The Library’s windows glinted. She could almost imagine Dotty inside, peering anxiously at the clock, waiting for news she knew she wouldn’t get until closing time.

Amanderella turned and continued upwards.

The path narrowed as it reached the shoulder of the hill. A few stones jutted from the earth, nothing remarkable at first glance, just the sort of rubble you find on any hillside. But as she climbed higher, the stones grew larger, more deliberate. A line of them curved around the slope, half‑buried, half‑broken.

The “old hillfort,” people called it.

Amanderella slowed, her eyes sharpening. Old stones. Old walls. Old stories. And perhaps something older still.

She reached the top.

The summit of Pennycill Hill was flatter than she expected. A ring of low stones curved around it, half‑buried in the turf. Most people saw a hillfort. Amanderella saw something else.

She crouched beside the nearest stone. It was lichen‑covered and cold to the touch. The shape was wrong for a fort wall, too narrow, too carefully placed. She brushed away a handful of dry grass and found a second stone beneath it, set at a right angle.

A corner.

She moved slowly around the ring, tracing the line with her fingertips. The stones were small, but they were laid in a pattern. A simple rectangle. A building, not a fort. A building with a doorway facing east.

Amanderella stood and looked out across the slope. The morning sun was climbing, brightening the sea. A skylark rose somewhere above her, singing into the bright sky.

She stepped over a fallen slab, and paused.

Something didn’t fit.

The church outline was small and neat, but just beyond it, half‑buried in the turf, lay a second set of stones. Larger. Squarer. Set deeper into the earth. At first glance they looked like part of the hillfort wall, but the angles were too sharp, too deliberate.

Amanderella knelt.

She brushed away a layer of dry grass. Beneath it, a corner emerged, a perfect right angle, cut from stone far heavier than anything used in the church foundation.

She cleared more earth with the side of her hand. Another corner. Then a third. A square.

Amanderella’s breath caught. She pressed her palm against the stone. It was cold and solid, older than the church, older than the hillfort story people told without thinking.

This was no Iron Age wall.

This was the base of a tower.

She stood slowly, taking in the shape. The square foundation sat slightly off‑centre from the church outline, as if the tower had once risen beside it, tall enough to be seen from the sea. Tall enough to be remembered in a legend.

She knelt again, brushing away another patch of turf. The stones here were thicker, set deeper. A corner jutted out slightly, as if the tower had once been broader at the base, tapering as it rose.

Amanderella sat back on her heels.

The priest in the legend had only a short time, a warning, a storm, a raid, accounts differed, but all agreed on the haste. He hid the valuables quickly. Not miles away. Here. Somewhere on this hill.

Amanderella stood and looked around the summit. The church foundation lay to her left. The tower base to her right. Between them, a strip of ground dipped slightly, forming a shallow hollow. The grass there grew thicker, darker, as if the soil beneath had been disturbed long ago.

She walked towards it.

The hollow wasn’t large. A few metres across. The kind of dip you might ignore unless you were looking for it. She crouched and pressed her hand to the ground. The earth felt different here, softer, looser, as if it had once been dug and filled again.

Amanderella’s eyes narrowed.

If the priest had only minutes, he would have chosen somewhere close. Somewhere he could reach from the tower door. Somewhere he could cover quickly with earth and grass.

Somewhere like this.

She straightened, her gaze sweeping the hilltop again.

And Marduk, clever, determined Marduk, might have realised the same thing.

There was a patch of flattened grass near the far edge of the summit.

She walked towards it.

The grass was pressed down in a neat oval, as if someone had slept there. A few crumbs of dry earth lay scattered on top, the kind that fall from the bottom of a rucksack. A small circle of stones marked where a tiny fire had been lit, not large enough to be seen from the town, but enough to warm a pair of hands.

Amanderella knelt beside it.

The ashes were grey and fine. Not old. Not fresh. A day or two, perhaps.

She touched one of the stones. It was warm from the sun, but beneath that warmth she felt a trace of soot.

Marduk had been here.

She looked around the summit again, more carefully this time. A footprint in the soft earth. A torn thread caught on a gorse twig. A single page from a notebook, blown against a stone and held there by the wind.

Amanderella picked it up. The page was blank, but the corner was folded, as if marking a place in a book. She slipped it into her pocket and stood.

Marduk had camped here.

He had found the ruins.

And he had gone on.

 

 

She turned back towards the hollow between the church and the tower. The earth was soft, yes, but untouched. No fresh scrape marks. No sign that Marduk had dug there. He would have tried. He would have checked. And when he found nothing, he would have thought again.

Amanderella did the same.

“If the priest had only minutes,” she murmured, “he would hide the valuables close by.”

She looked at the hollow.

“But not too close.”

Next to the tower was exactly where raiders would search. Any raider with eyes would overturn stones, kick at turf, and look for disturbed ground. The priest would have known that. Even in a hurry, he would have chosen somewhere safer. Somewhere less obvious. Somewhere he trusted.

Amanderella walked to the edge of the summit and looked down the seaward slope.

The grass grew longer there, blown flat by the wind. Gorse bushes clung to the hillside in tangled clumps. The ground dipped and folded in ways that hid shadows and hollows. A place easy to miss. A place easy to hide something.

A place Marduk would have gone.

She scanned the slope. At first she saw nothing but grass and gorse. Then, halfway down, she noticed a faint line where the grass bent differently, as if someone had pushed through it recently. A narrow track, almost invisible unless you were looking for it.

“Marduk,” she whispered.

She started down the slope, following the faint line of bent grass. It wasn’t a path, not really, just a place where someone had pushed through the tussocks. The ground dipped and rose beneath her feet, the wind sharper here, carrying the smell of salt and seaweed.

Halfway down, the slope steepened. Gorse bushes crowded the hillside, their branches twisted and thorny. Amanderella slowed, scanning the ground. The bent grass continued between two clumps of gorse, then vanished.

She stepped closer.

Something had brushed against the branches. A few yellow petals lay scattered on the ground, crushed. A twig was snapped cleanly, not weather‑broken, but broken by weight. She touched it lightly. Fresh.

Marduk had come this way.

Amanderella pushed the gorse aside. The branches scratched at her sleeves, but she kept going. Beyond them, the ground dipped into a shallow bowl of shadow.

There, half‑hidden by the curve of the rock, was a dark opening. Narrow. Low. Easy to miss.

Amanderella did not go closer. She stood still, assessing the lintel of the cave. The rock above it sagged, a shallow dip where the strata had cracked. Loose grit lay scattered beneath the crack, recently shaken free. She touched a pebble; it was dry, newly fallen.

The roof was a disaster waiting to happen.

Amanderella stepped back, the wind tugging at her coat, and listened with her head tilted slightly. She didn’t step inside; she didn’t even lean in. Instead, she stayed at a safe distance and called out, her voice steady and clear.

“Marduk?” she said. “Marduk Tibrickler?”

The cave swallowed the sound. For a moment there was nothing. Then, from somewhere deep within the shadow, came a soft scrape. Stone against stone. A pause. Another scrape, slower this time, as if someone were shifting their weight with great care.

“Madam… whoever you are… stay out,” a voice reached her, thin, strained, but unmistakably his. “Don’t come in. The roof’s… shifting.”

Amanderella froze, every sense narrowing onto that voice.

“Marduk, are you hurt?”

“I’m… pinned,” he said, each word slow and careful. “A slab fell. I caught it. If I let go, the whole roof… comes down.”

Amanderella’s breath tightened, but she didn’t panic. She stepped back again, widening her view of the slope, the rocks, the angle of the entrance. She needed to see everything before she made a single move.

“All right,” she said quietly. “I’m not coming in. I’m staying exactly where I am.”

She crouched again, still at a safe distance, her eyes tracing the line of the cracked stone above the entrance, the way the weight leaned inward, the way the fallen slab must be wedged inside.

“Marduk,” she said, her voice steady, “tell me exactly what you’re holding up.”

There was a long pause. Then his answer came, thin but controlled.

“A big slab. It slid when I tried to move it. I caught it with my shoulder. I can’t shift it. If I do… the roof will collapse.”

Amanderella nodded to herself, even though he couldn’t see her.

“Then we won’t let it collapse,” she said. “But I need to think. And you need to stay still.”

She stood slowly, scanning the slope for anything she could use: a long branch, a fallen trunk, a stone she could lever into place. She didn’t rush. She didn’t shout. She simply thought, the way she always did.

Now she knew where he was.

Now she knew the danger.

And now she could begin to work out how to get him out safely.

 

 

Lady Amanderella leaned closer to the narrow opening. “Marduk, I’m going back into Pentegfawr for help. Can you manage for a few more hours?”

He sounded a little stronger now, as if simply being found had given him hope. “Yes. I’m a bit hungry, but there’s a steady trickle of water. I’ve been able to drink.”

“That is good,” said Amanderella, turning to leave.

“Lady Gottsnobbler?” Marduk called again. “How do you know my name?”

Amanderella paused. “Ah. A certain young lady told me all about you.”

“Dotty?” he said, surprised.

“Yes. She came to one of my lectures and asked me to help find you.”

“You must be the Lady Amanderella Gottsnobbler she’s always talking about,” Marduk murmured.

“The one and the same.”

There was a small shuffling sound from inside the rockfall. “Then… may I ask you to do something before you go? Please. It’s important.”

“Ask away.”

“If you reach into the opening,” Marduk said, “you should be able to get hold of my rucksack and pull it out.”

Amanderella blinked. “Your rucksack?”

“Yes,” he said, as if this were obvious. “Guard it with your life.”

Amanderella reached into the darkness, her fingers brushing cold stone until they found the strap. She tugged it free.

“Please,” Marduk said, “don’t open it. And don’t let anyone else open it until I’m rescued.”

“I promise,” said Amanderella. “Now rest. I’ll bring help.”

She slung the rucksack over her shoulder and walked quickly back down the hill.