Stonehenge - Bernard Cornwell

'You hope that,' Saban said sourly, 'but you do not know it.'

'We have been to Cathallo often enough,' Kilda retorted. 'Your brother searched the woods for us, but some nights we even slept in Cathallo and no one betrayed us. We know what happens in Cathallo. One night I will show you.'

'Show me what?'

'Wait,' she said curtly.

Aurenna greeted them gently enough. She gave Kilda a cursory glance, made a fuss of Hanna and ordered a hut prepared for Saban. 'Your woman will share it?' she asked.

'She is my slave, not my woman.'

'And the child?'

'Hers,' Saban said shortly. 'The woman cooks for me while I work here. I shall need a score of men in a few days, more later.'

'You can have all there are after the harvest,' Aurenna said.

'Twenty will do for now,' Saban said.

Saban had decided he would move the very largest stone first. If that great earthbound rock could be shifted then the others must prove easier, and so he summoned the twenty men and ordered them to dig the earth away all around the boulder. The men worked willingly enough, although they refused to believe that such a rock could be lifted. Galeth, however, had told Saban how to do it and Saban now made the task easier by hammering and scraping and burning the vast boulder to reduce its width and so lessen its weight. It took a whole moon, and when the work was done the great boulder had begun to resemble the tall pillar it was destined to become.

Leir liked to come to watch the stone being hammered and Saban welcomed his son, for he had seen too little of the boy in the last years. While the men roughly shaped the stone the children of Cathallo scrambled over its surface, fighting to occupy its long stony plateau. They used ox goads as spears, and sometimes their mock battles became fierce and Saban noted approvingly that Leir did not complain when he was pierced in the arm so deeply that the blood ran to drip from his fingers. Leir just laughed the injury away, snatched up his toy spear and charged after the boy who had wounded him.

Once the stone's weight had been lessened they dug two trenches down its long sides. That took six days, and it took another two to bring the seasoned sledge runners up from the settlement. The huge runners were laid in the trenches, and then, using two dozen men and levers so long that their outer ends had to be hauled downwards with hide ropes, Saban raised one end of the great rock so that a beam could be shoved beneath it. Raising the one end took a whole day, and another was spent lifting the back of the stone and putting three more beams beneath. Saban fastened the beams to the runners, then dug a long smooth ramp up from the bedrock chalk.

He had to wait now, for it was harvest and all the folk of Cathallo were busy in the fields or on the winnowing floors, but those harvest days gave Saban a chance to spend time with Leir. He taught the boy how to draw a bow, geld a calf and stroke fish out of the river. He saw little of his daughter. Lallic was a nervous child, scared of spiders, moths and dogs, and whenever Saban appeared she would hide behind her mother. 'She is frail,' Aurenna claimed.

'Sick?' Saban asked.

'No, just precious. Fragile.' Aurenna patted Lallic fondly. The girl did indeed look fragile to Saban, but she was also beautiful. Her skin was white and clean, her golden eyelashes were long and delicate, and her hair was as bright as her mother's. 'She has been chosen,' Aurenna added.

'Chosen as what?' Saban asked.

'She and Leir are to be the guardians of the new temple,' Aurenna said proudly. 'He will be a priest and she a priestess. They are already dedicated to Slaol and Lahanna.'

Saban thought of his son's enthusiasm in the war games that the children had fought around the stone. 'I think Leir would rather be a warrior.'

'You give him ideas,' Aurenna said disapprovingly, 'but Lahanna has chosen him.'

'Lahanna? Not Slaol?'

'Lahanna rules here,' Aurenna said, 'the true Lahanna, not the false goddess they once worshipped.'

When the harvest was gathered the folk of Cathallo danced in their temple, weaving between the boulders to lay gifts of wheat, barley and fruit at the foot of the ring-stone. There was a feast in the settlement that night, and Saban was intrigued to see that both of his children, and all the orphans who lived with Aurenna, were at the feast, but that Aurenna herself stayed in the temple. Lallic missed her mother and when Saban made a fuss of her she looked as if she wanted to cry.

There was a fire burning in the temple, its glow outlining the skull-topped crest of the embankment, but when Saban walked towards that embankment a priest stopped him. 'There is a curse on it this night.'

'This night?'

'Just this night.' The priest shrugged and gently pulled Saban back towards the feast. 'The gods do not want you there,' he said.

Kilda saw Saban return and, leaving Hanna with another woman, came and took his arm. 'I said I would show you,' she said.

'Show me what?'

'What Derrewyn and I have seen.' She drew him into the shadows then led him north away from the settlement. 'I told you,' she said, 'that no one would betray us.'

'But you have been recognised?'

'Of course.'

'And Hanna? Do folk know who she is?'

'They probably do,' Kilda said carelessly, 'but she has grown since she was here, and I tell people that she is my daughter. They pretend to believe me.' She leapt a ditch then turned eastwards. 'No one will betray Hanna.'

'You are not from Cathallo?' Saban asked. He still knew little about Kilda, but her voice betrayed that she had learned Cathallo's language late. He did know that she was little more than twenty-two summers old, but otherwise she was a stranger to him.

'I was sold into slavery as a child,' she answered. 'My people live beside the eastern sea. Life is hard there and daughters are more valuable if they are sold. We worshipped the sea god, Crommadh, and Crommadh would choose which girls were to be sold.'

'How?'

'They would take us far out on the mud flats and make us race the incoming tide. The fastest were kept to be married and the slowest were sold.' She shrugged. 'The very slowest were drowned.'

'You were slow?'

'I deliberately went slowly,' she said flatly, 'for my father would use me in the night. I wanted to escape him.'

She went south now, approaching the temple. No priest or guard had seen them loop far out into the fields and there was only a sliver of a moon to light the stubble. 'Be quiet now,' Kilda said, 'for if they see us they will kill us.'

'If who sees us?'

'Quiet,' she cautioned him, then the two of them climbed the steep chalk slope of the embankment under the baleful gaze of the wolf skulls. Kilda reached the summit first and lay flat. Saban dropped beside her.

At first he could see nothing in the wide temple. The big fire burned close to Aurenna's hut and its violent flames threw the flickering shadows of the boulders across the black ditch onto the inner slope of chalk. The fire's smoke plume, its underside touched red by the fires in the settlement, sifted towards the stars. 'Your brother came to Cathallo this afternoon,' Kilda whispered into Saban's ear, then pointed to the temple's far side where Saban saw a black shadow detach itself from a boulder.

He knew it was Camaban, for even at that distance and although the man was swathed in a bull-dancer's cloak, he could see that the figure was limping slightly. The great hide hung from his shoulders, the bull's head flopped over his face, while the hoofs and tail of the dead beast flopped or dragged on the ground. The bull-man limped in a clumsy dance, stepping from one side to another, stopping, going on again, peering about him. Then he bellowed and Saban recognized the voice.

'In your tribe,' Kilda whispered, 'the bull is Slaol, yes?'

'Yes.'

'So we are watching Slaol,' Kilda said scornfully.

Then Saban saw Aurenna. Or rather he saw a shimmering white figure come from the shadow of the hut and run lithely across the temple. White scraps floated behind her. 'Swan feathers,' Kilda said, and Saban realized his wife was wearing a cloak like her jay-feather cape, only this one was threaded with swan feathers. It seemed to glow, making her ethereal. She danced away from Camaban who roared in feigned rage and then rushed towards her, but she evaded him easily and ran around the temple's margin.

Saban knew how the dance would end and he buried his face in his arms. He wanted to throw himself down the embankment and kill his brother, but Kilda had placed a hand on his back. 'This is their dream,' she said flatly, 'the dream which drives the temple you build.'

'No,' Saban said.

'The temple is to reunite Slaol and Lahanna,' she said remorselessly, 'and the gods must be shown the way. Lahanna must be taught her duties.'

Saban looked up to see that Camaban had abandoned the chase and was now standing beside the piled harvest which lay by the ringstone. Aurenna was watching him, sometimes skipping aside, then gingerly going nearer before skittishly darting away again, yet always the erratic steps took her closer to the monstrous bull.

This was the dream, Saban realized, and yet the anger was hot in him. If he killed Camaban now, he thought, then the dream would die, for only Camaban had the rage to build the temple. And the temple would reunite Slaol and Lahanna. It would end winter, it would banish the world's troubles. 'Did Derrewyn tell you to bring me here?' he asked Kilda. 'So I would kill my brother?'

'No.' She sounded surprised that he had asked. 'I brought you here to see your brother's dream.'

'And my wife's dream,' he said bitterly.

'Is she your wife?' Kilda asked scornfully. 'I was told she cut her hair like a widow.'

Saban looked into the temple again. Aurenna was close to Camaban now, yet still she seemed reluctant to join him; she took some fast steps backwards and then danced to one side, smoothly and gracefully. Then, slowly, she sank to her knees and the dark shape of the bull lumbered forward. Saban closed his eyes, knowing that Aurenna was surrendering to his brother just as Lahanna was supposed to surrender to Slaol when the temple was made. When he opened his eyes again he saw that the feathered cloak had been tossed aside and Aurenna's naked back was slim and white in the firelight. Saban growled, but Kilda held him firm with her hand. They are playing at being gods,' she said.

'If I kill them,' Saban said, 'then there will be no temple. Isn't that what Derrewyn wants?'

Kilda shook her head. 'Derrewyn believes the gods will use their temple as they want, not as your brother wants. And what Derrewyn wants of you is her daughter's life. That is why she gave Hanna to you. If you kill them now, won't there be revenge? Will you live? Will your children live? Will Hanna live? Folk think those two are gods.' She nodded towards the temple, but all Saban could see there now was the great humped shape of the bull cloak, and under it, he knew, his wife and brother coupled. He closed his eyes and shuddered, then Kilda took him in her arms and held him close. 'Derrewyn has talked with Lahanna,' she whispered, 'and your task now is to raise Hanna.' She rolled onto him, holding him down with her body, and when he opened his eyes he saw she was smiling and saw she was beautiful.

'I have no wife,' he said.

She kissed him. 'You are doing Lahanna's work,' she said quietly, 'and that is why Derrewyn sent me.'

In the morning there were just ashes in the temple, but the harvest was gathered and the work on the long stones could at last be resumed.

—«»—«»—«»—

The sledge had been made beneath the longest stone, the ramp was finished, the hide ropes were laid on the grass and now the largest ox team that Saban had ever seen was assembled on the hillside. He had a hundred of the beasts; neither he nor any of the ox herdsmen had ever managed a team so large and at first, when they tried to harness the oxen to the stone, the beasts tangled themselves. It took three days to learn how to lead the ropes to tree-trunks from which more ropes led to the harnessed oxen.

Camaban had gone from Cathallo as secretly as he had come, leaving Saban in a confusion of anger and joy. Anger because Aurenna was his wife; joy because Kilda had become his lover, and Kilda did not talk with the gods, she did not preach how Saban should behave, but loved him with a fierce directness that assuaged years of loneliness. Yet that joy could not overcome the anger in Saban and he felt it when he saw Aurenna climbing the hill to watch the long stone dragged from its place. She wore her jay-feathered cloak so that she glinted white and blue as she led Lallic by the hand. Saban turned from her rather than greet her. Leir was standing beside him, an ox goad in his hand, and the boy looked at Kilda and Hanna who both carried bundles. 'Are you going back to Ratharryn?' Leir asked his father.

'I'm travelling with the stone,' Saban said, 'and I don't know how long it will take, but yes, I'm going back to Ratharryn.' He cupped his hands. 'Take them forward!' he shouted to the ox herdsmen and a score of men and boys prodded the beasts who lumbered ahead until the traces were all stretched tight.

'I don't want to be a priest,' Leir blurted out. 'I want to be a man.'

It took a few heartbeats for Saban to realize what the boy had said. He had been concentrating on the hide ropes, watching them stretch tighter and wondering if they were thick enough. 'You don't want to be a priest?' he asked.

'I want to be a warrior.'

Saban cupped his hands. 'Now!' he shouted. 'Forward!'

The goads stabbed, the ox blood ran, the beasts fought the turf to find their footing and the ropes began to quiver with tension. 'Go,' Saban shouted, 'go!' and the oxen's heads were down and suddenly the sledge gave a grating lurch. Saban feared the ropes would snap, but instead the stone was moving. It was moving! The great boulder was grinding up from the earth's grip and the watching folk cheered.

'I don't want to be a priest,' Leir said again, misery in his small voice.

'You want to be a warrior,' Saban said. The sledge was coming up the ramp, leaving a smear of crushed chalk behind the broad runners.

'But my mother says I can't take the ordeals because I don't need to.' Leir looked up at his father. 'She says I have to be a priest. Lahanna has ordered it.'

'Every boy should take the ordeals,' Saban said. The sledge had reached the turf now and was sliding steadily through the ox dung and grass.

Saban followed the sledge and Leir ran after him with tears in his eyes. 'I want to pass the ordeals!' he wailed.

'Then come to Ratharryn,' Saban said, 'and you can take them there.'

Leir stared up at his father. 'I can?' he asked, disbelief in his voice.

'Do you really want to?'

'Yes!'

'Then you will,' Saban said, and he lifted his delighted son and put him on the stone so that Leir rode the moving boulder.

Saban took the cumbersome sledge north around Cathallo's shrine because the team of oxen was much too large to go through the gaps in the temple's embankment. Aurenna paced alongside, followed by the crowd, and when the boulder had gone past the temple she called for Leir to jump down from the sledge and follow her home. Leir looked at her, but stubbornly stayed where he was. 'Leir!' Aurenna called sharply.