“It's not a matter of can I do it. Of course I can do it. The question is if I can be arsed to do it.”
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The Divide
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Morning light filtered down through thick white river fog, mingling with the scrape and grunt of shovels and the workmen attached to them. The river Fosse, wide and cold, stretched out into the misty edge of sight. Its water lapped and purled, making quiet and innocent-sounding conversation with itself as it flowed past. The workmen, five in all, crowded a diminutive island set in the center of the river; they weaved around each other in a plodding, slow-motion dance, careful not to tip each other into the drink. Their shovels carefully scooped up the earth they stood on and flung it out into the water, slowly and painstakingly reducing their refuge down towards the water line.
The sound of the digging had fallen into a rhythm a while ago, scoop and grunt and splash repeated in an endless round, until the heartbeats of the workmen seemed to follow along. Then, suddenly, a shovel blade sounded an off note as it hit something hard; the cadence stumbled to a halt. The workmen looked at the man who had done it; he looked back at them just as dumbfounded. Then as one, five shovels turned to where he was digging, pulling away the earth and diving for the same hard whatever-it-was.
“I told you!” the smallest of them crowed as the shovels revealed a broad, chisel-worked stone and a moment later a line of ancient mortar. “The Imperials knew their stuff. Island my ass. This is the center pile of the old bridge. Come on, come on, keep going!” He waved his hands and the shovels redoubled their efforts; he turned his own shovel to work, as well.
When centuries of sediment were stripped away, the island revealed itself to be the ragged base of a bridge piling, broad stone blocks held together by crumbling mortar. The workmen set about testing for loose stones, scrutinizing the structure to see if it could be salvaged. The short foreman all but capered as the old stones proved stable more often than not. “A new facing around the edge and we can use this as a foundation. Save us a month of work!”
It was then that his boot shifted a stone at the center of the old pile; he bent down to inspect it and found it came up easily. It was thin and recessed, not unlike a lid, and it covered a small space a few hand spans across. The foreman grimaced before he looked inside, knowing what he would find: a human skeleton, and a small one. A child’s. “Maurice, fetch a bit of tarp from the boat,” he called, and drew the skull out of the hole. The workmen looked at him, understandably uncomfortable. “For all their skill, the Imperials were slaves to their superstitions,” he told them. “We’ll give this one a proper burial.”
The men busied themselves with their work while he transferred the child’s bones into the burlap bag Maurice provided. There was a handful of other items in the cramped little space: two ancient coins, an empty pot with a broken lid, and a good amount of dust, which could have once been anything. In the dust, he found the brooch: a simple affair of twisted copper wire wrapped around a pearl. Brushing away the dust, though, the pearl tipped out of its ancient setting and fell. It bounced off the stones, spinning towards the edge and the water. Milton made a frantic grab, then another, and finally lunged after it; he fingers closed around the pearl inches above the river’s surface.
Into the boat he deposited the burlap bag containing the bones, the coins, and the pot. The brooch’s setting he dropped into the bag as well, but the pearl he tucked into a pocket for safekeeping.
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