FLASH FICTION:With no words spoken, the men covered the bundle in loose pieces of turf and vegetation, letting the water seep upwards. 'I'll wait,' said Charlie

THE MACHINE had been busy all that morning and the men were ready for a break, tea and a smoke. And, most of all, a rest for aching backs.

They were on the last slice before knocking off when Mick saw that the cutter was picking up something. He signalled Charlie to stop, before some bit of bog oak could tangle in the works, and bent to check the blades.

Nearer, he saw it was something long, heavy swathes of some kind of material that were too even to be matted vegetation. Charlie got out, wheezing, to clear whatever it was. He was the first to see the length and shape of the bundle, lifted at one end while the other remained below the surface, the water sucking it back. Old cloth, perhaps, left in the bog to season and colour, centuries ago, then forgotten.

The upper end of the heavy weave had been sliced through and out of it had been pulled some strands. They were fine, like hair, reddened now, long, curling slightly towards the ends. Very gently, keeping the cloth in the bog, he moved the folds aside.

The face was gone, just the outline of the bones, a slightly formed woman, perhaps a girl. She was lying as she had been set, with nothing left but the woollen cloth as a shroud, and the long, reddened hair, curling slightly, seen again at last by the silent men.

Mick covered her face again.

With no words spoken, the men covered the bundle in loose pieces of turf and vegetation, letting the water seep upwards. “I’ll wait,” said Charlie. Mick nodded and went for help.

Charlie stood a while, hesitant, then muttered a brief, uncertain prayer and found a seat above the cutting. The bog was still but for the small movements a bog always has, the creatures on their private business, the meeting of beetles, bog cotton swaying in the slightest wind, and the odd cry of a bird.

She had waited through many such days, and others too, when the rain soaked her hair, seeping through the cloths, so the acid ate her face, leaving only the surrounds, that long, reddened, curling mass that gave her glory in death.

Then came the upheavals. The officers of state arrived, only to be told they were not wanted. They lingered out of interest, which they masked as officialdom, until the people from the museum came down, with their knowledge and packaging.

Very gently, she was raided from her grave. Much later she was lifted from her shroud. Her death had been no glory. Buried at night in a secret place, the result of some evil too long ago to matter.

But it had been summer and the seeds from the bog had caught in her hair during that final struggle.

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