‘Just wait,’ Jaz says, as someone shouts his name and he starts heading towards the trench with the last of the tyres. His eyes are shining. ‘It’s amazing.’

I wait. I stand on the far southern edge of the ridge until the trench is secured, the rain becomes heavier, and the archaeologists start to pack up and reluctantly leave. Jaz stays behind, waits until everyone else has gone before making his way back to me. And even though we’re alone, that sense of excitement, of discovery, is still palpable enough to raise the hairs along my skin.

‘I’ll show you,’ Jaz says. ‘But don’t tell anyone I did, okay?’

I follow him along the ridge and round the barrow. Crouch down beside him as we reach the space between the cemetery wall and the covered trench.

‘We’ll have to be quick,’ he says, pushing a couple of tyres off the tarpaulin and fighting to keep hold of it as the wind howls around us. ‘It’s already been exposed for too long.’

I’m expecting bones. This is, after all, a burial mound. But as Jaz reveals the trench, I see a body, a person. I almost recoil, not in fear or disgust, but something else – something I can’t name. The body is curled into the foetal position on its right side, hands covering its face. Its limbs and torso are a muddy brown. It has hair, dark and matted against its skull. Its fingers are curled into fists that mirror mine. When Jaz drops the tarpaulin over the trench again, I almost snatch it out of his hands.

‘It’s amazing, right?’ His eyes are still shining. ‘Just amazing.’

‘How can—’

‘The body’s mummified. Professor Higgins reckons it was buried in peat before being buried out here.’ He grins. ‘I mean, it’s fucking amazing. He looks like he could have been buried a year ago, right? But everything – all the artefacts we’ve found so far – are late Bronze Age. He has to be three thousand years old.’ His eyes widen. ‘At least.’

I look down at the rain drumming against the tarpaulin, already forming puddles. My heartbeat is slowing, but my skin is still taut, my muscles rigid. ‘How did he die?’

‘We don’t know for sure. There’s blunt-force trauma to his skull. What might be stab wounds to his torso. The bones need to be carbon-dated, and then we can look at definitive cause of death. Find out for sure if he was killed. Find out why.’

But I know why. I think of those brown fists covering his face. The leather restraints around his wrists. I think of all the books I read when I was a kid. This is what people do. What they have always done. To protect themselves and those they love. Anger, rich and deep like sorrow, heats my skin and slows my heart. I think of my father slicing open a fish’s belly and sprinkling its blood into the waves. We sacrifice so that we are not sacrificed. We offer up whatever we can to be safe. That’s what really keeps a white-bright light burning.