Mrs. Nightwing corrals the girls, and I hurry back into the fold. As I do, I hear Ithal talking to the other Gypsies. “Do not be tempted by English roses. Their beauty fades, but their thorns are forever.”
“Miss Doyle! What were you doing with those men?” Mrs. Nightwing scolds.
“I’d a pebble in my boot. I only stopped to remove it,” I lie.
“Scandalous,” Cecily whispers. Her whispers could be heard by the dead.
Mrs. Nightwing takes hold of my arm. “Miss Doyle, with the others, if you please—” Her admonition is interrupted by a loud shout from one of the workers.
“Oi! There’s somefin’ down ’ere!”
Several of the men jump into the hole between the new turret and the old portion of the school. A lamp is called for and one is lowered. We follow Nightwing, crowding around the hole, hoping for a glimpse of whatever has been found.
The workers discard their shovels. They whisk dirt-stained hands back and forth, clearing the clumps of drying mud away. There is indeed something beneath the ground—part of an old wall. The stone bears strange markings but they’re too faint to see. Mr. Miller frowns. “What’s that, now?”
“Could be a woine cellar,” a man with a bushy mustache opines.
“Or a dungeon,” another says, grinning. He smacks the boot of the smallest among them. “Oi, Charlie—be a good lad or it’s into the ’ole wif you!” He makes a sudden grab for the young man’s ankle, scaring him, and the men fall into rowdy laughter.
Mrs. Nightwing takes the lamp and holds it over the ancient stone. She examines it from above, pursing her lips, and then, just as quickly, gives the lamp back to Mr. Miller. “Likely it is a relic from the Druids or even the Romans. They say Hannibal himself may have led his troops through these parts.”
“Ye might be right, missus. Looks to be a marker of sorts,” the burly man says.
There is something strangely familiar about it all, like a dream I can’t quite catch before it flies away forever. I can’t keep from reaching fingers toward the relic. My breathing comes faster; my skin is warm. I want to touch it…
“Careful, miss!” Mr. Miller pushes me back as I topple forward.
The warmth leaves my hands, and I startle as if waking.