Amanderellaand the Punctual Ghost Chapter 10.

Chapter 10.

 

Roman Remains or not?

 

The kitchen door creaked open, and Osric stamped his feet on the mat with the purposeful energy of a man who had spent three hours successfully outstaring a hawthorn bush. He was wind‑swept and triumphant, though he had nothing to show for his morning but a damp hem and a piece of particularly interesting moss.

“The alignment!” he declared, heading straight for the coffee pot. “It is almost visible to the naked eye if one squints at the precise moment a cloud‑burst passes.”

Amanderella, seated at the table, accepted a second shortbread finger from Honoria. “It is a fascinating landscape, Dr Wocal‑Eardew. I took a turn behind the kitchen garden earlier. The view from the plateau is quite clear.”

Osric paused, his mug halfway to his lips. “The plateau? You went past the gate?”

“A little further,” Amanderella said mildly. “I found a most peculiar square field. The turf is very thin, and the ground feels remarkably solid beneath it. It seemed almost… deliberate.”

The effect on Osric was instantaneous. He set his mug down with a clatter. “Square? Truly square? With defined corners?”

“Precisely so,” Amanderella replied. “And a line of stones that do not appear to belong to the local limestone.”

“Cassiana!” Osric barked, eyes wide. “The notebook! We must go at once. It’s the way‑station! It’s the missing link!”

Cassiana appeared from the pantry, already reaching for a pencil, as though she had been expecting this exact summons.

“You’re not going anywhere in that waistcoat, Osric,” Honoria’s voice cut through the excitement like a chilled blade. She held up his heavy woollen coat. “The wind is coming off the moor with a sharp edge, and I’ll not have you coming back with a chest cold. Arms in.”

Osric obeyed with the distracted compliance of a child being dressed for school.

“And Lucian,” Honoria added, turning her gaze toward the corner where Lucian was attempting invisibility behind a newspaper. “Put your boots on. You’ve been indoors for three days, and your complexion is starting to resemble the porridge. You need the air.”

Lucian let out a long, tragic sigh, the sound of a man being sent to the front lines without a bayonet. “But the barometer is falling, Aunt Honoria. I might be rained upon.”

“Then you shall be damp,” Honoria said firmly. “It will build character. Coat on.”

The small party began to assemble in the hallway: Osric humming with academic fervour, Cassiana checking her measurements, and Lucian looking as though he were preparing for a funeral march.

“Shall we lead the way?” Amanderella asked, her tone entirely composed despite the chaos she had just unleashed.

Honoria watched them from the doorway, hands tucked into her apron. “Mind the stile, Osric. And Lucian, if you complain about the mud, you can help with the washing up when you return.”

The expedition set off, Amanderella in the lead, guiding the Wocal‑Eardews toward the truth of the ridge.

The ascent was slow and frequently interrupted. Amanderella led with a steady, rhythmic pace that suggested she was used to far steeper inclines, while Osric scurried ahead in bursts of nervous energy, his walking stick tapping a staccato rhythm against the limestone.

Behind them, the suffering was hard to miss. Lucian, wrapped in a coat that seemed to weigh more than he did, picked his way across the turf as though every blade of grass were a potential trap.

“The moisture,” Lucian murmured to the empty air. “I can feel it seeping into the very soles of my boots. It is extraordinary how the countryside conspires against one’s socks.”

“Nonsense, Lucian,” Cassiana called back without looking. She was already unbuckling her satchel, her pencil tucked behind her ear in a gesture of brisk, professional readiness. “The movement will improve your circulation. Think of it as a physical programme.”

They reached the plateau just as the wind gave a sharp, playful gust. Amanderella stopped and gestured with a gloved hand toward the thin turf.

“Here,” she said.

The silence that followed was broken only by the heavy breathing of the Wocal‑Eardew men. Osric stood frozen. He didn’t look at the view; he looked at the ground. His gaze followed the stubborn, straight line of the terrace, then traced the sharp, unnatural right angles where the mound rose to meet the ridge.

His dawning delight was a quiet, almost reverent thing. He sank to one knee, ignoring the dampness that would earn him a lecture from Honoria later, and touched the exposed gritstone block.

“The tooling,” he whispered, his voice trembling with a child’s wonder. “Cassiana, look at the tooling. This isn’t a hedge, and it isn’t a shepherd’s whim. It’s a deliberate, Roman hand.”

A faint tremor ran through the turf then, so slight that it might have been nothing more than a shift of wind across the ridge. The gritstone under Amanderella’s hand gave a tiny, almost polite shiver.

Lucian straightened at once. “What was that? The ground moved.”

Cassiana didn’t look up from her ruler. “Coal train,” she said. “They run them through the cutting in the afternoons.”

Osric, absorbed in the tooling, barely heard her. “Look at this edge, Amanderella, perfectly squared—”

Another soft vibration passed through the stones, a low, distant rumble rising and fading like a breath under the hill.

Amanderella glanced toward the hidden valley. The sound seemed to travel along the line of the old trackway, as though the ridge itself were carrying it.

But the others had already returned to their measurements, their sketches, their theories.

The hillside settled.

The moment passed.

And the Roman stones waited patiently for their turn to be understood.

Cassina was knelt at a corner, her folding ruler clicking into place with the sound of someone who had never once mismeasured anything.

“Twelve feet to the first joint,” she announced, scribbling in her notebook. “The orientation is precisely east–west. It’s a way‑station, Osric. Or a small resting station. It fits the spacing perfectly.”

Lucian leaned heavily on his stick, looking down at the ancient stones with a weary expression. “Well,” he sighed, “at least the Romans had the sense to build on a flat bit. If they’d had any real consideration for posterity, they’d have put a bench here. And perhaps a windbreak.”

Amanderella watched them with a small, satisfied smile. She observed the way the light caught the ridge, highlighting the ghost of the trackway as it stretched toward the hidden valley.

“It is a very well thought out location,” she noted. “The drainage is excellent, and the visibility covers both the village and the pass. They were not people to be caught unawares.”

“They were geniuses,” Osric breathed, finally standing and dusting his knees with a distracted hand. He looked at Amanderella, his eyes bright behind his spectacles. “To think… I have been staring at that hawthorn for three years, and it was waiting here all the time. Just beyond the fence.”

“Sometimes,” Amanderella said gently, “Sometimes you have to stand in a different place to see what’s been there all along.”

The party came down from the ridge in considerably better spirits than they had gone up. Osric was buoyant, almost airborne, and so delighted by the discovery that he forgot to walk into the wrong door, forgot to misplace his stick, and even forgot to comment on the hedge. Cassiana kept pace with him, her notebook already half‑filled. Lucian trailed behind like a man returning from a minor war.

Honoria met them at the back door with the air of someone who had already put the soup on the table and would not tolerate delays.

“You’re damp,” she said, looking Osric up and down. “But not soaked. That’s something.”

Osric opened his mouth, the Roman revelation trembling on the brink of escape, but Honoria raised a hand.

“Boots off first. Then soup.”

That settled it. Osric obeyed, vibrating with unspent enthusiasm.

They had barely taken their seats when the front bell rang with the unmistakable insistence of someone who believed himself important.

Honoria closed her eyes briefly. “Lucian, see who that is.”

Lucian went, shoulders slumped, and returned moments later with the expression of a man who had found a wasp in his shoe.

“Sinjin von Vroom,” he announced, as though reporting a natural disaster.

Von Vroom swept into the dining room without waiting to be invited, clutching a brown glass bottle as though it were the secret to everything.

“I have made a discovery!” he proclaimed. “A Roman artefact of the utmost significance! I require the local antiquarian at once.”

Osric, halfway through his first spoonful of soup, froze. His eyes flicked to Amanderella, then to Honoria, then to the bottle.

It was unmistakably a Tetley’s beer bottle. The label was gone, but the shape was pure 20th century.

Honoria did not rise. “Dr Wocal‑Eardew is eating.”

Von Vroom ignored her. “Sir! Examine this! The patina alone suggests great age.”

Osric took the bottle with the air of a man handling a fragile relic, not because he believed it, but because he was trying very hard to be polite. He turned it over once. Twice. A third time, as though hoping it might transform into something respectable.

Amanderella watched him with quiet sympathy. She could see the Roman masonry glowing behind his eyes, begging to be spoken of.

Honoria, however, was unmoved.

“Osric,” she said firmly, “finish your soup.”

Von Vroom looked outraged. “But the artefact—”

“It’s a beer bottle,” Honoria said, in the same tone she used for “Your boots are muddy” and “Lucian, stop sighing.”

Osric cleared his throat. “Ah. Yes. Quite modern, I’m afraid. Late nineteenth century. Possibly dropped by a rambler.”

Von Vroom stared at him, wounded. “But the shape—”

“Is standard,” Cassiana said, without looking up from her bowl.

Amanderella hid a smile behind her spoon.

Von Vroom drew himself up. “Well. I shall take it to the county museum. They will know genius when they see it.”

He swept out, bottle under his arm like a wounded pet.

The door closed.

Silence.

Then Osric burst.

“Amanderella, the sone carving! The right angles! The gritstone! Cassiana measured—”

“Osric,” Honoria said, “bread first. Then Romans.”

He subsided, but only just, glowing like a lantern.

Amanderella met his eye and gave the smallest nod, permission, reassurance, and shared triumph all in one.

The soup was served. The discovery waited. And the house, for the moment, held its breath.