Slater (Hengist: People of the Horse Book 4)

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Slater (Hengist: People of the Horse Book 4) Page 12

by Jacky Gray


  Jadon interrupted. ‘A couple of them only had a short length below ground so they had shifted over the years.’

  ‘Exactly. Some were leaning out of alignment and one of the large gateways had completely fallen over.’

  This was one of the history professor’s areas of expertise. ‘We have records showing that a large team of engineers repaired the fallen stones and fortified the others. They liaised with the Aveburgh masons and detailed plans, showing the exact positions of stones, were drawn up for both temples.’

  Cathair picked up the tale. ‘From that point on, there were always several craftsmen within each village tasked with surveying the temple to note any weaknesses and repair them. This work was of great importance, requiring the attention of the most skilled masons in the village.’

  Jadon jumped in again. ‘In the case of Aveburgh, this means your father, Slater.’

  Cathair’s look of amused exasperation suggested that this interruption was a regular thing, but he allowed his friend to continue.

  ‘I’m sorry to doubt your story, Slater, but I’ve seen Mason’s drawings for Stonehenge. Although they are very detailed, none of them indicate alternative arrangements of stones in previous eras.’

  Slater realised his story would have more credibility if he could show them some kind of evidence and tried hard to think of something which might convince them. Then it came to him – something they could see with their own eyes. ‘The dark circles. In the grass.’

  They both jumped at his outburst; Cathair recovered first. ‘What dark circles in the grass?’

  ‘At Stonehenge. Round the edge, just inside the bank. Exactly where the bluestones were. I measured them at Litha; they were all five paces apart.’

  ‘You really think no one would have noticed these dark patches before now? Are they on the plans?’

  ‘I’m sure people have noticed them, but if no one knew why they were there, they would probably just have ignored them. If we go to the temple, I can show you.’

  Professor Jadon’s expression suggested this would be a wasted journey.

  Cathair nudged his arm. ‘Aren’t you the slightest bit curious? If the lad’s right, this could lead to a new theory on how the temple was used.’

  ‘Which means you’ll have to update some of your lessons to include it.’

  ‘No doubt. It may even give us more ideas about what the people were like who built the remarkable structure. Maybe a few clues to how they really did it.’

  ‘Which means I’ll have to update some of my lessons.’

  ‘At the very least it would be an interesting intellectual exercise. Worth a day’s travel there and back.’ Cathair brimmed with enthusiasm. ‘I’m sure my sister would be pleased to put us all up for the night so we could spend a couple of days examining it properly.’

  The trip was organised in a matter of days – Slater couldn’t explain the sense of urgency which had taken hold of him, but it infected the professors as well. Even his father was positive about the whole thing when he asked for a copy of the plan to study before the journey.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re taking such an interest in the structure of a temple. After all the years I’ve tried to get you interested in my job. You were always more concerned with the Magi stuff.’

  ‘Sawyer was always keen to go with you; he had more than enough enthusiasm for both of us.’

  ‘Are you saying you didn’t want to go because he was there? I would have been happy to take you on your own.’

  The hurt look made Slater wish he hadn’t involved his father. He tried to repair the damage. ‘No, it wasn’t that at all. This trip is more about the historical and ritual significance, not the architecture. I’m afraid I didn’t get your skill in that area; I would just have been in the way.’

  Even as he said the words, he knew he’d made things worse, not better, so he just took the plan and left, hoping his father would understand he was never going to be a chip off the old block.

  As the two professors discussed the methods of raising the stones in great detail, he regretted not listening more to his father’s teachings.

  ‘Obviously the great gates would have been raised first; there is no question of that.’ Professor Jadon knew his subject well, but Cathair was keen to show his expertise.

  ‘Yes, but even before they raised them, they would have marked out the positions of the sarsens. They couldn’t have done it once the gates were there.’

  ‘Naturally. I spent a pleasant afternoon with Kenryk trying to show me how it was done with nothing more than a length of rope and some posts. Quite ingenious. No doubt your father’s shown you the trick, eh, Slater?’

  ‘I’m sure he’s probably tried, Professor Jadon, but I’m not very good at technical things like that.’

  ‘Ha. Your brother asked the question in one of the advanced history classes. I was sure he’d found out from your father and was trying to show off his knowledge in front of the class.’

  ‘Sawyer’s not like that sir.’ Slater sprang to his brother’s defence. ‘If he asked, it would be because he wanted to know. But you’re right; I do remember Father showing us how to do it. Maybe showing Sawyer would be more accurate. He got annoyed with me because I always got it wrong or I stood in the way.’

  ‘I must confess, I asked Professor Kenryk and he got very mathematical with his explanation.’ Jadon gave a sympathetic wink. ‘Something to do with creating a hexagon inside the circle, then finding a pentagon at one of the corners and using that to get the distance between the pegs. Very advanced technology for these ancient peoples to work out.’

  ‘I remember the hexagon; it was quite easy using the radius of the circle.’ Slater shrugged. ‘But after that it sounded like a foreign language, inscribed angles and adjacent vertixes.’

  ‘You mean vertices.’ Jadon smiled to soften the correction. ‘That just means corner and adjacent just means next to. But I quite understand; it is a complicated method, much too difficult for a junior.’

  ‘But we think the circle of lintels was created before the sarsens were put in place to raise them high.’ Cathair’s tone suggested he had reservations.

  Jadon’s reply held faith. ‘That is the general opinion of scholars, although we can never know for sure. Skilled people like Mason are convinced it couldn’t have happened any other way – it would have been impossible to build.’

  ‘If he’s sure, that’s good enough for me. There isn’t anything that man doesn’t know about building.’

  Slater’s heart swelled with pride as his father’s name was mentioned with such esteem by two of the people he respected most in the world.

  When the big day arrived, Slater was secretly amused by their eccentricities, such as Jadon’s addiction to speed and Cathair’s abhorrence of it. The compromise meant they travelled in Jadon’s smart new carriage with a pair of fine stallions, but Cathair drove it at a fairly sedate pace.

  They were both impressed by the dark patches of grass inside the bank, and Jadon was keen to measure and record the positions on Slater’s plan.

  Cathair sought permission from the correct authorities to remove the turf and investigate the ground beneath it. The chief Magi, an old friend to the professors, insisted they wait until the principal architect in charge of the site – also called Mason – was available. This meant waiting until the next day.

  Jadon could barely suppress his excitement at the day’s findings; even without digging, he could tell this was an important discovery. As they sat round the dinner table piled high with the best of the season, he could not stop talking about the implications of the holes.

  Thinking back over the day’s experiences, Slater felt privileged to have spent the day pursuing one of his passions with such knowledgeable guides. He curled up happily in a corner of the large guest room as the two men continued their discussion of the different temple arrangements into the small hours. At one point, his consciousness was poked by a conversation. Jadon had mentioned
his name and as he swam to the surface, Slater heard something about danger and power. Before he awoke fully, the scraping of chair legs told of their exit and he settled back down to sleep.

  A general, all-over ache woke Slater up some hours later. He stretched the stiffness out of his limbs as quietly as he could. Not that the other occupants were in danger of waking any time soon, if the cacophony of snoring was any indication. His mouth felt as though he had been chewing mouldy bark all night, so he crept into the darkness, looking for some water. After a few moments of stumbling around, he realised something was very wrong.

  23 – Lunella, the Daughter of the Moon

  The smell gave the first clue that something was amiss. Cathair’s sister had filled the house with the mouth-watering scents of-freshly baked bread and aromatic herbs. Instead, the sour stench of unwashed animal assaulted his nostrils. The loud snoring did not come from the professors but a number of large pigs. If he had not already experienced two unusual dreams, Slater might have thought he had been sleepwalking like his aunt did occasionally. One time when she stayed at his house, they had found her curled on the mat in front of the fireplace with the cat. Another time she had climbed into his bed, pushing him out of the other side so he had ended up sleeping in the guest room.

  But this was no sleepwalk. Cathair’s sister did not keep pigs, and the walls of the building were made of woven twigs, not the brick-built sty of local farmers. Once his eyes accustomed to the darkness, Slater made out a doorway. He moved along the wall until he reached it, and crept outside. For an instant, a pale moon shone full and low in the sky. In the winter, that would have made it close to sunrise or sunset, but the intense dark made it more likely to be summer, when the moon’s zenith was not as high. The ambient temperature backed up that conjecture – it felt like a balmy summer night. Patchy clouds did not let much light through and he looked up, hoping to find the North Star or Venus to help orient himself. As he searched the scant covering of stars for a familiar shape, the clouds thickened until they obliterated the light.

  A sense of dread took hold, making him shiver; his aunt would have said someone had walked over his grave. An image flickered into his brain, a familiar one of her sweeping away the negative energy with her bundle of rowan, oak and birch twigs. He could almost feel her presence, easing his worries. His mind cleared enough to realise it really didn’t matter which way was north if he didn’t know his location to begin with. He could recognise nothing of the surroundings, except it must be a farm because of the pigs. Apart from that, he could be anywhere.

  His previous journeys into the past had been a lot easier; on both occasions there were plenty of people around and it was daylight. This time, apart from the old-fashioned construction of the pig-pen, there were no clues to when he was, let alone where. He had a strong sense he’d once more landed in a strange place in order to right a wrong. The feeling he needed to act became more urgent, but he was reluctant to move until he could at least see the way. No matter how hard his eyes tried to accustom to the gloom, he could not penetrate the inky blackness. It stifled, as though he was trapped in black velvet. The rational part of his brain reasoned that the chance of injury was high – it made no sense to stumble around in the dark.

  As though the clouds heard his thoughts, they slipped away from their stranglehold on the moon, and he saw a path leading toward a forest. At least if he could climb a tree, he might get a sense of the layout of the land. The flattened grass glinted in the silvery light as if confirming he’d made the right choice. He followed it cautiously, all his senses alert for the danger. Two ancient trees flanked the path, and he hesitated. They were sacred yews – the bushy type used for protection rather than the tall ones grown for their fine staves. Not good for climbing, the pair of them effectively blocked the pale moonlight from penetrating into the dense vegetation behind.

  But there was no need to climb them; a picture formed in his mind. Whoever needed his help was somewhere surrounded by tall trees. He had no choice but to enter the forest without so much as a torch to guide him. This time, he had no handy pack of fire-sticks in his pocket.

  Summoning his courage, he ventured between the noble sentinels which seemed to whisper encouragement. Despite his concerns, the level of light was nothing like as bad as he had imagined. Glancing behind, he saw the moon had aligned herself on the path and dropped lower so more of her precious rays could creep in below the branches to guide him. His whole body tensed, listening for the slightest sound, but something protected him from the night-time dangers as he made his way deeper into the forest. All the good sense and warnings his mother had drummed into him were forgotten. Without looking for a sign to mark the route, he left the path, following an instinct which came from somewhere outside of him.

  The same instinct made him stop a few feet from the centre of a large clearing, where several huge branches had been piled up. The connection leading him here strengthened, and he wasted no time in hauling away the branches to reveal a number of sapling tree trunks criss-crossed over an enormous pit. Pale light shone from above, and he looked up curiously; sure that the moon had been a lot lower when he entered the forest. Dismissing it as an optical illusion, he watched as the clouds cleared so he could see a little more.

  Peering into the pit, he made out little except the vast depth; the light did not reach the bottom. Taking one of the branches, he stripped away all but the central limb, which measured about the same height as him. Lowering this down one side, he could tell it would not reach the bottom and pulled it back. None of the other branches were much longer, so he searched the saplings to find the thinnest one and laid it on the ground. Using the Slater-sized branch, he measured it as three times his height. Being thin, it wasn’t too heavy, but the length made it tricky to manoeuvre. He worried about what would happen if it landed on top of the person he was sure occupied the pit. Once again, the moon helped by positioning herself to illuminate some of the murky depths. A pair of pale legs shone as they reflected the light.

  Slater’s heart tightened as he recognised they were female, but unmoving as though their owner was asleep. Refusing to consider other possibilities, he hastened to his task, carefully lowering the unwieldy trunk. The pit swallowed most of the length, but it finally reached the bottom, leaving a couple of feet above the ground. He reasoned the depth was too far for a jump, and if he lowered himself down and hung onto the edge with his fingertips, he would still have to fall quite a long way. The walls looked too smooth to climb back up without a rope and the forest yielded nothing he could use. If he got a couple of the larger saplings and wedged them at an angle, he could use them as a kind of ramp. He was trying to work out how to move the largest of them without the rest falling down, when a voice spoke. ‘Slater, is that you?’

  The still figure below was completely illuminated now and he saw the woman, but the voice had sounded like a man’s. He searched the shadows, looking for its owner. Ignoring the fleeting thought that no man from this time would know him, he started as the voice spoke again. ‘Thank you for coming. I need your help.’

  As before, the voice sounded inside his head, but he had no chance to find out who knew him and how he could help. His arms were grabbed roughly and he was forced to his knees as his fate was discussed.

  ‘Come to rescue your wicce have you? Look, he’s put one of the sticks into the pit.’

  ‘They must be short of men if all they can send is a scrawny lad.’

  A large, black-bearded man strode in front of him. ‘We should just slit his throat now.’ He spat on the ground. ‘Kenit fox, coming to cause trouble.’

  ‘No, we should take him to the chief.’

  ‘Roldan won’t be pleased if you wake him up this early, he’ll probably slit his throat and yours too for disturbing him.’

  Roldan is still chief? The thought filled Slater with hope. ‘Roldan knows me. He will be angry if you harm me.’ Even as he spoke, he realised that when the Roldan he knew was chief, the Durr
en tribesmen spoke a lot differently. But it caused them a moment’s pause and after a whispered discussion, they hauled him to his feet. One of his captors pulled Slater’s hood away from his face and several of the others pointed at his red hair with worried whispers.

  His insides flipped as he realised not only was their speech different, but their clothes were more advanced. This Roldan could be a descendant of the chief’s son he’d met on his earlier visit. Thankfully, he remembered enough of his warrior training to present them with the cold face, not meeting anyone’s eye, but showing no fear.

  ‘We’ll see what the wicce thinks.’ Black-beard picked up one of the smaller branches and threw it down into the pit, keeping up a steady stream of abuse. ‘Come on wicce, we know you’re awake. Raise your ugly bones and look at this lad. If you tell us his name, you can have some water. If you don’t, he dies and we’ll poke you with his stick.’

  As she stood up, Slater recognised a grown-up version of the lively girl he once knew. She was a mess, her dress torn and her silver hair tangled and matted with mud and leaves. But her words were the signature on his death-warrant. ‘I have never seen him before in my life.’

  His insides were churning at the threats but a cool voice sounded inside his head. ‘Stay calm; it’s a trial.’

  Trying to keep his expression remote and disinterested, he examined her face; trying to be sure he was not imagining the likeness. She looked a lot like her mother, but she did not quite have Mondilla’s regal haughtiness.

  ‘I don’t know if I should be pleased by that remark.’

  It took all of Slater’s concentration to maintain his composure as he realised that like Mondilla, she could read his thoughts as well as talk into his mind. Before he could control the thought that the lack of arrogance made her more beautiful than her mother, it slipped through his mind. It was met with a dry chuckle and a reprimand that this was no time for idle flattery.

 

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