The rain had cleared by mid-morning. That left a low, yellow autumn sunlight that slanted across the grey clay hummocks behind the old central depot. The storehouses themselves were long gone—their oak timbers had been dismantled twelve years ago to build tenant barns for Marshal Brand’s sheep farms—leaving only the box-shaped stone sleeper walls sunken into the nettles.
Nessa Vale drove her three-foot steel probing rod into the soil forty paces north of the main granary foundation. She leaned her shoulder against the cross-handle. That forced the narrowed point through the sod and the underlying river silt. Her brass sighting scope stood twenty yards away on its three-legged ash mount, lined up with the old boundary stone that marked the northern limit of the military yard.
At eighteen inches, the steel struck something soft and spongy that gave way with a dull, rubbery thud. She drew the rod out. Then, the fluted groove along the shaft was packed not with brown loam, but with a foul-smelling white paste that reeked of sulfur, vinegar, and rotten dough.
“Wet lime plaster,” Nessa said, wiping the smear onto a dry oak leaf. She held it to her nose, her lips tightly packed into a thin line. “Mixed with fermented rye meal. Look at the turf color here. The thistle stems are stunted and yellow, and there’s no clover within thirty yards. The earth was burned with unslaked burning lime powder before they backfilled the trench. They dug a ditch sixty yards long and…
