The Bog Read Online Free PDF Page A

most assuredly had a false bottom, and the only thing that punctuated its dark and impenetrable surface would be again the semifloating mats of sphagnum and decaying vegetation.
    But he discerned nothing that explained why the bittern had behaved so strangely when its course had taken it over the perimeter of the grounds.
    “What’s that place?” he asked.
    “It’s known as Wythen Hall,” Brad replied. “It’s the home of the local gentry, the Marquis de L’Isle.”
    A small breeze rustled by them, and as David started back down he was struck once again by the oddness of someone building so stately a manse on a location so dominated by the bog. In fact, it occurred to him that in a way Fenchurch St. Jude and, indeed, the entire valley were dominated by the bog.
    The thought had lingered in his mind for but a moment when his attention returned to the matter at hand. “Now why don’t you show me that body?” he said.
    “Let me get you some boots to put on first,” Brad replied. He ran into his tent, then returned with a large pair of wading rubbers. David put them on and they strolled toward the excavation. As the land sloped downward it became wet and gushed beneath their feet. David looked at Brad worriedly.
    “It’s okay. I’ve checked the area out thoroughly. There are no sinks.”
    David nodded, grateful for the information, but he still walked carefully.
    Finally they reached the side of the excavation, and David looked down. The hole itself was about six feet square and maybe five feet deep. The first several feet of strata on the sides of the pit were composed of a dark-colored peat David recognized as wood-peat, and below this a reddish peat stratum of decomposed sphagnum known to peat cutters as “dog’s flesh.” A foot and a half into the dog’s flesh and resting peacefully on the reddish and muddy bottom of the pit was the body of a young girl.
    She lay on her back, her head twisted to one side and her left arm outstretched. Her right arm was bent up against her chest, as if defensively, and her legs were lightly drawn up, the left one over the right. She looked much like any young girl might have who had only recently settled down for a nap, except for the fact that her skin, once white, was now a shiny and resinous black. It was a jarring contrast, the perfect preservation of her features against the almost metallic and petroleum-like color of her skin. It was as if a talented sculptor had carved her out of coal and then polished the surface of his work to a high gloss. David was spellbound. Her every feature had been preserved, every pore in her skin, her nails, the whorls and lines of her fingerprints, and the gentle creasings of the skin at the bend of her wrists.
    The reason for her remarkable state of preservation was, of course, the tannin and other soil acids in the peat and the bog water that seeped through it. Not only did they tan the skin and turn it into leather, but they also combined with other proteins in the body and converted them to a form of synthetic plastic. They had been lucky in this instance, however, for if the acidity of the bog water had been too high it would have dissolved the young woman’s bones and left them with nothing but her skin. Fortunately, that had not happened.
    To some, David Macauley’s macabre interest in the bog bodies might have seemed ghoulish, but it was not morbidity that had drawn him to study such things. Again, it was his love of history, his voracious desire to know everything that was knowable about the past, and now, as he looked down at the body, he felt not horror, but a tremendous excitement. He could scarcely believe it. If she was indeed as old as they believed, she had lived and breathed and smelled flowers nearly a thousand years before the Norman invasion. She might possibly have even caught a glimpse of Caesar himself, and it took his breath away to think that here, he, David Macauley, was looking at the hair, the hands and flesh