The Bog Read Online Free PDF Page B

inscription loosely: Bringing you this last gift for the dead, accept this offering wet with tears.
    “Do you think she was Roman?” Brad asked.
    “I don’t know. It was uncommon for Roman women to have blond hair, but it was not unheard of. Where’s the cloth that you said was found with her?”
    Again Brad vanished into the tent and this time reappeared with a large plastic bag containing several sizable remnants of a coarse and greatly discolored cloth. David took them and examined them closely. Even though rotted, he discerned a check design in the fragments that was clearly of Celtic origin. This posed a puzzle.
    “Well what do you think?” Hollister asked.
    “I think that there are two possibilities. The first is that she is a Roman and was buried in the bog by the Celts. That means that the comb belonged to her originally, but the cloth, which is Celtic, was placed over her by the Celts who interred her in the bog. But that would not explain why she was buried in the bog by the Celts, or how the Romans allowed one of their number to undergo a burial practice they most assuredly viewed as pagan.”
    “Or the inscription on the comb,” Brad added.
    David nodded.
    “And the other possibility?”
    “The other possibility is that she is Celtic, but somehow came into possession of a Roman comb.” David paused, once again gazing meditatively at the inscription. “You know, the inscription almost suggests that the comb was meant as some sort of votive or offering. Perhaps she was a sacrificial victim in some long-forgotten Celtic ritual and a Roman woman who happened to witness the event decided to give her a comb as a sort of oblation to the foreign god.”
    A diffident smile crossed Brad’s lips. “That was my conclusion. Obviously when we figure out how she died that will give us some further clue. But I wonder if we’ll ever figure out the second puzzle?”
    “The second puzzle?”
    “If the woman was a sacrificial victim in some sort of Celtic ritual and was given the comb by a Roman woman who witnessed the event and wanted to make some sort of offering, why was the comb wet with the Roman woman’s tears? She must have been very unhappy about something. I wonder if we’ll ever know the cause of her unhappiness.”
    David shrugged. It was an interesting notion, but he knew that their chances of answering the question were remote unless, of course, the bog contained still further clues to the mystery. His heart leaped at the hope, and he surveyed the landscape around them, wondering what else, if anything, lay hidden in the inky depths of Hovern Bog.
    Brad seemed to read his thoughts. “I have something else to show you,” he said, and David noticed that the younger man had an uncharacteristic sparkle in his eye. He gestured with his head in the direction of one of the other holes and David followed him.
    When they reached the second excavation David looked down and saw that it was almost as deep as the first, but narrowed toward the bottom and was, as yet, nowhere near as wide. At first, as he peered into the conical depression in the quagmire, he saw nothing. He shifted his weight, and his boots squished softly in the mud as he leaned closer. Finally his attention came to rest on an unusually sleek patch in the side of the hole. At first his mind only registered that the area possessed an anomalous texture. But as he continued to scrutinize it, the pieces finally fell into place and he realized what the object was. What he was looking at was the side of a human thigh, darkened by the bog water so that it was the same color as the surrounding peat, but a human thigh nonetheless. There was at least one other body buried in the bog.
    “Why didn’t you tell me?” he exclaimed.
    “I only found it this morning. I thought it would make a nice surprise.” Brad grinned proudly, but with a modesty not unlike a child who has just surprised a parent with a handmade valentine.
    David continued to just stare