CHAPTER 1

A peat digger found her, three-and-a-half feet deep in the bog, lying on her back, staring up at the heavens; though this was not revealed until the peat was later stripped from her body ...

What the digger—an excitable lad named Sam—struck first was a shoe. It was a peculiar shoe, shaped like a kayak. Still, he had thought little of it. Items like it were forever turning up in Holders Fen, as if the bog were that place where all lost things—the key to the garden shed, the clip-on shades someone swiped from your room—eventually resurface, sooner or later. Except with this shoe, a foot was still in it!

Frightened, the boy pitched the spade and ran, screaming bloody "Murther!" Aroused by his cry, and misunderstanding, his father and brothers came careening around the hedgerows, sickles in their fists, ready to do battle with the murderers, if any. But there was only the splendid late April morning spread out upon the bog, in the middle of which lay the corpse—or, more precisely, the foot: a woman's shapely, well-turned member, which, though stained deep amber by the peat and water, looked almost as fresh as if it had tripped moments ago through the morning dew.

By the time I arrived, the village constable was there. A local girl had disappeared and it was feared at first it might be she. It was the constable who had directed the first partial disinterment—so that her face and the front of her body could be viewed. I gazed upon her. She was dressed in slippers, hide-side out. Otherwise, her corpse was nude. The red chevron of her pubic hair was visible, as were her ribcage and round, high breasts with surprisingly large areolas, the size and tint of old copper English pence.

But her face was the miracle: it was at once beautiful, wild and pained. A strip of cloth blinded her eyes, and her arms were drawn behind, as though bound. Her hair was rather stylishly done—braided to one side in a three-stranded plait—and over it was a delicate hairnet tied at the chin. Her clothes were neatly folded beside her. But the strangest part was the four forked sticks pinning her limbs.

The boy was right. This was not some girl who had lost her way and foundered in the fen. Someone had definitely buried her here. And whether dead or alive at the time of her planting, she was clearly meant never to get up again.

Because of the corpse's nudity, the blindfold and bonds, a sex crimes unit of the West Dorset CID (Criminal Investigation Department) had been summoned. It was they who had called me on their way to the site. Not that I'm with British law enforcement. I'm an anthropologist and American, to boot, a visiting fellow at nearby Exeter University, where I've worked for over eighteen months beneath these lovely, lonely British skies. Not that I'm complaining; England is an archeologist's heaven. Dotted with dolmens, barrows, henges and hoards, not a month goes by without some exceptional find.

By the time we arrived, the last day of April already was waning. Despite the nearness of the farm, the bog retained a certain primitive isolation. Still, it was an innocent wildness, and the only thing sinister, apart from the corpse, was the presence of some unruly rooks cawing in the trees that, unlike the spectators gathered below, looked on the body with a hunger that was more than lascivious curiosity.

"We're a-thinkin' she's one Mildred Carr," the constable averred.

Can you fall in love with a dead woman? For in that instant, with the evening light full on her, she looked like a goddess arisen from the earth.

"Mildred Carr?" I asked. "And when did Mildred disappear?"

"Sunday week."

"Then I doubt very much that this is she"

"And why's that, sir?" the constable asked. He squinted at the corpse. "Fresh as a daisy. Can't be more'n a fortnight dead."

"No, I'm afraid this body is considerably older"

"Is it now?" the constable asked in a voice that implied I was totally daft but that he was too well-bred to disagree. He peered at the body, stroking his chin.

"And her name isn't Mildred. I'll guarantee you that"

"Aye, sir? And how would you know that, sir?"

I looked at the corpse; its freshness was an illusion. "Because whoever she is and however she died, it was several thousand years ago."

Even before I'd laid eyes on the body I was almost certain it wasn't modern, for such archaic corpses—wondrously preserved—have been turning up in fens throughout the British Isles for years. The physics behind their preservation is simple: the peat bog's anaerobic waters inhibit bacteria, without which there is no decay.

Last fall I'd examined a similar cadaver. As it had a noose round its throat and a hammer of sorts embedded in its temple, there was relief bordering on jubilation when I pronounced it neolithic, and nothing the cops or anyone else need worry about that night. So it wasn't surprising I'd been called in again.

Still, I had never seen one in such immaculate condition. Bending over her now, I could make out the down on her upper lip and count the pores in her cheeks and brow. As I gazed, the unhappy expression of her face worked upon me, so that something inside of me yearned to untie the biting blinder that had sealed her eyes so long—a demand I resisted, not wishing to disturb the evidence.

For evidence it was. Despite the body's apparent antiquity, there is no statute of limitations on murder, and the case was thus a homicide first and only second, an archeological wonder.

However, my estimate of the body's age was overruled and my suggestion that we impose a grid upon the scene and, with trowels and brushes, extract the body carefully from the surrounding peat was disregarded, and the phone calls I made to my colleagues at Exeter and to several respected scholars in the field went straight to their voicemails. And so I did what I could to lend a hand while attempting to minimize the archeological damage.

But even a modern corpse, as the CID believed she was, could not be simply wrenched from the muck. Evidence had to be collected, something which their forensics team now attempted, while I used my camera and iPhone video to document the scene. At the same time, exposure to the elements would quickly rekindle the body's decomposition. So we had to work fast. I dug until I raised a blister, then donned some gloves and dug some more.

With the fall of night, we worked in the glare of flood lamps. While we labored, a blizzard of moths and other night-flying insects dazed themselves against the lights. The body was so entrenched that when the CID attempted to remove it, it threatened to come apart, forcing us to remove the surrounding peat. The corpse, in its raised platform of sod, now looked like a figure of inlaid gold. Finally, we took a crosscut saw and, with the blade pressed flat against the earth, cut through the peat, detaching the sod plateau.

We tried to move it. Impossible! Later, we found it weighed three-quarters of a ton, and it took another three hours, a large sheet of roofing tin driven beneath it, several thick chains, and the strength of a winch on the back of a lorry to lift it up ... revealing in a hollow just below it ... treasure!

For beneath the body was a cache of classical Celtic ornaments, curved and gleaming in the mackerel dawn, like so many gold and silver serpents.

At this point, I think, it did start to become clear that my estimate of...