Emma Smith: Torchwood

Army of God

I met Gregory (who prefers being called Dolly) and Ben the day before we were called out to look at a coin. "And if there's nothing down there?" One of the builders ask.
"There's always something down there," Mum retorts, climbing out of the car. I join her, quickly.
"We have a mystery," Ben passes her the coin.
"Is that an Arab coin?" I ask.
"Yes, Emma, it is. It's dated from the fourteenth century. What the hell's a Middle Eastern coin doing in a park in Somerset?"
"What do you want to do, Ruby?" Ben asks.
"Well, we have a medieval riddle to solve. So we start digging."

"So, you see, you have to be careful," Mum explains as I gently scrape the mud off a coin.
"Wow," I whisper. "This feels cooler than it must be in history lessons. You never get to do it hands on."
"No, you don't," Mum agrees. We climb out of the trench.

When we walk into the tent, we notice that there's a new girl there. "Who's that trip-trapping over my bridge?" Mum asks.
"Er... Viv. Vivian Davis."
"'Vivian'. Witch of Arthurian legend." I chuckle at Mum's response. Mum holds up some damascene metal. "Sword metal found beside Saracen coinage."
"They couldn't have been fighting Saracens here," Ben argues. "That's just nuts." Everyone heads back to the trenches except Viv, Mum and I. Dolly heads to the pub to get some lunch. Viv scans the data.

"How are you feeling, Emma?" Mum asks.
"Almost outlawed," I chuckle. "Mummy'll be doing her head in." Mum laughs.
"Yeah, she will be." As Dolly arrives with the food, Viv finds bodies lying under the dirt. We dig another trench. I help Mum dig up a bone, carefully brushing off the mud. We join Ben soon afterwards as he takes pictures of the skeletons. It was a battle- a proper battle with professional soldiers and Turks. "See here?" Ben asks. "This one must have had a sword to the head due to the damage to the skull."
"But this was 2,000 miles away from the crusades," I exclaim. "This is rewriting the history books!" I can feel thrill flow through me. An alarm beeps, with Ben saying that they have to show their faces at the facility thing.
"Now I have to put on a frock," Mum grumbles.

I think about staying at the site, but Mum refuses. "I'm not going to let you stay at the site on your own."
"But I won't be on my own," I argue, but Mum still refuses. I get changed into the smartest clothes I have brought with me and join Dolly and Ben at the event. It ends up only being about a man who published a book, with only 2% of the profits going into the archaeology department. He could of at least put 20% into it, or even 10%, that would allow them to buy better resources. Mum gets a book signed, and he annoyed her within a minute. She put the book back, and we left. "He seemed a bit... um, arrogant." I finally find the word.
"Yes, he is." Mum agrees.

We head to the lab and start analysing the swords. Mum sees the cotton, and under UV, we find out that the soldiers were from the Knights Templar, the soldiers of Christ. Our soldiers date from the 1300s, around the time the church turned against them. "So our knights escaped France, only to find they are killed in England by Saracens?" I ask. "But how did Saracens end up in England? That doesn't make sense." Viv says that she thinks that they had a cart after finding some wood at the site.

The next morning, I find a small wooden cross at the dig site. "It belonged to a Grandmontine," Dolly tells Mum and me as Mum cleans it.
"Well, Grandmontine monks were the chroniclers of the Templar." I point out. "There's a high chance one of them was travelling with our knights when they were attacked." Mum and Dolly turn to me. "It's something I read recently," I explain. Mum looks at it through a magnifying glass.
"Why has he carved a snake and a sword at the back?" I have a quick look.
"The chord has been snapped like it was pulled from his neck by force."

"So, Europe turns against the knights, a small band flees from France and winds up here," Mum begins. "They head north, looking for a Templar church as a refuge. A Grandmontine monk is travelling with them, and Saracens attack them."
"But that's absurd." I point out. "There's no way that Saracens could get to England in the middle ages, but could the knights have brought something from France? Viv found the wood, and that could give us a clue as to where it came from and why the Knights brought it to England."
"But the only thing precious to them were spiritual relics from the Holy Land," Dolly tells me.
"Christ was nailed to a cross in the Holy Land," I tell myself. "Maybe that was it! Maybe they think they found the Cross of Christ and brought it to England." Viv gets tea and biscuits for us as we talk about what happened. She says that despite the Crusades and wars in the name of religion, she believes that God can be found in the quiet places. "I like that," I smile.