It was raining so hard that Mark stayed in the Range Rover, drinking cold espresso straight from the flask and listening to a play on the radio about a widow who compulsively knitted cardigans for her recently-dead husband.
"It took me ages to find this shade of grey. Shale, they call it. It matches his eyes."
"He's dead, Maureen. He's never going to wear it."
"Don't be silly. Nobody dies, so long as you remember what they looked like."
He was thinking about calling it a day when he saw Katie trudging across the field toward him, in her bright red raincoat, with the pointy hood. He let down the window, and the rain spattered icy-cold against his cheek.
"You look drowned!" he called out. "Why don't you pack it in?"
"We've found something really exciting, that's why."
She pulled back her hood. Her curly blonde hair was stuck to her forehead and there was a drip on the end of her nose.
"Where's Nigel?" he asked her.
"He's still there, digging."
"I told him to survey the ditches. What the hell's he digging for?"
"Mark, we think we might have found Shalott."
"What? What are you talking about?"
Katie wiped the rain from her face. "Those ditches aren't ditches, they used to be a stream, and there's an island in the middle. And those lumps we thought were Iron Age sheep-pens, they're stones, all cut and dressed, like the stones for building a wall."
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