Triskellion

by Will Peterson

  The man in the leather jacket walked away from the dig and across towards Rachel and Adam, rubbing his hands as if he had been doing some of the work.

  “Ah, you must be our local experts. All the way from the US of A!” Dalton tried his hand at an American accent, oblivious to the look between Rachel and Adam. “Lovely Laura’s told me all about you.”

  “Rachel, Adam … this is Chris Dalton our presenter,” Laura said.

  “Presenter, executive producer and owner of the production company to be precise,” Dalton said. He gave a small bow and an elaborate flourish of his hand as if he were an Elizabethan courtier, while Laura nodded to affirm that what he had said was true. “So, Laura, have you been through the questions with young Adam?”

  Laura nodded. “We’ve talked through a few facts about the surrounding area, the estimated age of the circle and so on. And we’ll show a few of the coins Adam has borrowed from Mr Honeyman to illustrate the point.”

  “Great,” Dalton said. “That’ll give us a few sound bites.”

  Adam looked puzzled.

  “Chris means quotes,” Laura said. “So, are you happy to go through some stuff with Chris and Amanda?”

  Amanda, the production assistant, had just waddled over, dressed head to toe in wet weather gear and carrying her ever-present clipboard. She smiled pleasantly and waved at Adam.

  Adam waved back. “Sure.”

  “I’m going back to the church,” Laura said. “To do a bit more work.” She turned to Rachel. “Do you want to come with me?”

  In just two days, Rachel had come to feel that in Laura, she had found an adult she could really trust. Laura was everything she wished herself to be: intelligent, brave and honest. For the first time since she had come to Triskellion, she felt safe, she felt protected. And, having found a new friend, she was starting to think about Gabriel a good deal less.

  She looked across at Adam and saw the same expression that had been plastered across his face for the last two days. She could tell he felt the same way about Laura that she did, though it was perhaps for different reasons. He stared at her when she talked, and blushed almost every time she spoke to him.

  Despite their brief acquaintance, if Laura Sullivan had asked either of them to come with her, Rachel and Adam would have followed her anywhere.

  In the church, Laura knelt down and took detailed digital photographs of the tomb and the faint inscription round its base.

  “Any idea what it says?” Rachel asked. “The vicar thought it was something to do with a crusader called Sir Richard de Waverley.”

  Laura stood up. “Yes, I’d read that, too. But there’s a couple of things that don’t add up.”

  “Like what?”

  “These are runes. You know what runes are?”

  Rachel shook her head.

  “They’re an early kind of alphabet that came even before the Saxons, say about two or three BC, OK?” Rachel nodded. “So if this guy Waverley was a crusader, he wouldn’t have been around until about nine hundred years later. See my problem?”

  “So, what do the letters mean?” Rachel asked.

  “Well, I’m not fluent in rune, but there are one or two symbols I recognize.” She knelt down again and Rachel knelt next to her. “This one here…” She pointed to a symbol that looked like a jagged streak of lightning.

  “This means sowilo, or the sun. It’s a very ancient, powerful symbol. It was used as recently as the Second World War by the Nazis, as part of their insignia.”

  Rachel pulled a face. She knew all about them.

  Laura traced her finger over the next readable rune.

  “This is a very common rune, raido, meaning journey or ride. So we’ve got sun-ride, or sun-journey maybe. Could relate to the shooting star on the stained glass window, perhaps. Then there’s a few missing, but here’s the sun symbol again.” Laura pointed out another lightning shape. “But this time, it’s attached to the mannaz rune:

  This one signifies ‘man’. So we’ve got sun-man, man of the sun, whatever that might mean…”

  “Sun-worshipper?” Rachel suggested.

  “Could be,” Laura said. “Back then people really did worship the sun. They didn’t just lie about in it all day.” She went back to the inscription. “Then it all gets a bit more mysterious.” She traced her finger over an area where the runes had been worn or deliberately chipped away. “This quite often happens, because ancient people were superstitious, thought the runes themselves had magic properties. Sometimes they’d destroy inscriptions they thought contained bad messages or curses.”

  Rachel pointed to where the inscription became readable again. “What about these ones?”

  “I’m not sure about most of them,” said Laura. “But that one is iwaz, the ancient name of the yew tree, which was really important to the druids.”

  The name rang a bell with Rachel. “What’s a yew tree like?”

  “They’re massive with huge, twisted trunks made from several parts grown together…”

  “With kind of stripy red bark and evergreen leaves?”

  “That’s the one,” Laura said. “They’ve always been significant landmarks, for sacred sites and so on.”

  Rachel remembered the huge tree from which Adam had emerged with the Triskellion blade. As though the blade had been safeguarded by the tree for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. Snippets of information came back to Rachel. “The leaves are poisonous, right?” she asked.

  “That’s right,” Laura said. “They’ve always been powerful to the druids for that reason. They say that they used to get rid of unwanted babies by giving the pregnant mother yew berries.”

  “Gross,” Rachel said, wincing. All the time, her head was spinning with flashes of information. With ideas and images that were beginning to knit themselves together little by little: the yew tree; the knight and the maiden; the baby twins; her mother; her grandmother; Gabriel…

  Fragments of a dream. Pieces of a jigsaw.

  “It’s not all bad,” Laura said without looking up. “They’re still using yew bark in chemotherapy today to combat cancer. Which gives us a clue to this last symbol, kauna:

  It means illness, so maybe illness refers to the poison of the berries … so we’ve got yew-illness, something like that.”

  The images swirled, screaming inside Rachel’s head, making her feel sick and dizzy.

  Laura looked up. “You OK, Rachel? You look pale.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Rachel said, steadying herself against the cool stone of the carved knight. She tried to refocus her mind. “So you think this tomb is much earlier?”

  “Certainly the base of it is.” She nodded towards the carving. “I think our friend here, that the village has always thought was a crusader, is probably someone much, much older.”

  “So, what about Sir Richard de Waverley?” Rachel asked, trying to put the pieces together.

  Laura stood up and, like Rachel, instinctively patted the tomb. “If you ask me,” Laura said, “Sir Richard de Waverley never existed.”

  “What?”

  “Look, the Wing family has been at the centre of village life since records began, no question about it. They built Waverley Hall, the church, virtually all the village as we know it. I’ve done a heap of research on this and it looks to me like this Richard de Waverley character is something they made up.”

  “Why would they do that?” Rachel asked.

  “Who knows? Maybe to gloss over some family scandal way back, or to divert attention from what this tomb really represents.”

  Rachel could feel the hair on her scalp prickling. She blinked slowly and imagined herself standing on the edge of a precipice, looking down into the black mouth of a dreadful secret; about to tumble headlong into something from which there would be no return. “So who do you think it does represent?” she asked.

  Laura took a step nearer the statue, reached out towards the crack that ran across the dead stone face. “That’s what we’re going to fin
d out.”

  “And … action!” Chris Dalton dropped his hand in front of the camera, giving the sign for no one but himself to speak, and began to move.

  “Peaceful village, England,” he boomed. “The bleak splendour of the moors…” The cameraman, who was doing his best to keep pace, widened his shot and Dalton spread his arms expansively as if the whole area belonged to him. “We’re here in one of the oldest settlements in the country to investigate the very thing that gave this village its name. The Triskellion. The huge chalk circle carved into the ground in a strange ancient pattern. Is it a place where druids worshipped the sun? Is it the burial place of an important Bronze Age family?” Dalton stopped, put on a mysterious voice and put his face close to the camera. “Or is it something else entirely? Is it perhaps some kind of prehistoric compass?” He cocked his head and smiled. “We’re here to find out in this week’s … Treasure Hunters.” He froze for a few seconds and then relaxed. “And … cut!”

  “Nice one, Chris,” the cameraman said. “Do you want to go again?”

  “No need,” Dalton said. “I think I got it in one take, don’t you, Amanda?”

  The production assistant looked up from the clipboard and nodded enthusiastically. The take was fine, but there was little point arguing even when it wasn’t.

  “Let’s move on.” Dalton looked round. “Where’s the kid?”

  Amanda pointed.

  They walked over to where Adam was standing by the Triskellion, Dalton calling out as they approached. “OK, Adam,” he said, “we’re going to film the questions we went through. Happy to have a go?”

  Adam nodded. Having a TV camera pointed at him did not bother him unduly after some of the things he’d been through, and Adam had always relished his appearances in school plays, speaking in front of class and that kind of thing.

  But then Chris instructed Amanda to bring the morris dancers over.

  Adam looked over to where a couple of cars were parked near the Treasure Hunters van. Seven or eight men were beginning to assemble, dressed in leafy costumes, their faces painted green or in one or two cases black. They wore an assortment of top hats, furs and antlers on their heads. Adam’s stomach flipped over.

  He had seen men like this before.

  Chris Dalton saw him looking at the men. “Morris dancers, they call themselves,” he said. “The Green Men.” He scoffed. “Green loonies if you ask me. We thought they’d add a bit of local colour, dancing round the circle, jingling their bells and shaking their sticks while we film.” Dalton directed Adam to stand in the middle of the circle. “It’ll make a great shot,” he assured him.

  The camera began rolling, and Dalton called “action” again.

  “I have with me here Adam Newman. Now, although Adam lives in America, his mother’s family have come from Triskellion for centuries. Hi, Adam…”

  “Hi,” Adam said, trying to stop his voice from wavering. From the corner of his eye, he could see the Green Men assembling at the edge of the circle.

  “I understand you are a keen amateur archaeologist,” Dalton said. “Can you tell us what you know about the chalk circle?”

  “Er, well, we know that the symbol is probably Celtic and was carved during the Bronze Age.”

  “Which makes it how old?” Dalton asked the question as if he already knew the answer himself. Adam glanced around nervously before he replied.

  “About three thousand years,” Adam said.

  Dancers were now positioned at points round the circle, their painted faces staring impassively towards Adam at the centre. Each of them carried a thick, wooden stick, stripped of its bark.

  “Three. Thousand. Years.” Dalton gave a whistle as if impressed. “And can you show us some of the things you’ve discovered here?”

  Adam opened his palm, revealing a selection of coins, pins and brooches that Honeyman had lent him.

  “Coins and other pieces that date back to Roman times, and beyond.” Dalton began to walk away from Adam, the cameraman following him. “But here’s the big question. Is there something far more valuable buried beneath our feet?”

  As Dalton stepped out of the circle, leaving Adam stranded in the middle, he gave the morris dancers a nod to start.

  A drumbeat struck up and, one by one, the dancers started a shuffle and a hop, tracing a pattern along the chalk lines of the Triskellion. They began to move faster and faster, crossing and skipping past each other where the lines intersected, clashing their sticks together with a noise that made Adam flinch. Bells attached to the legs of their costumes jangled as they danced and leapt to the beat of the drum. It appeared to Adam that, as they got faster, the circle of dancers was tightening in on him – so close that he could smell their sweat. It seemed as though they were skipping a little nearer to him each time they passed; smashing their sticks together closer and closer to Adam’s head.

  The circle of men concealed Adam from the camera and meant that he could no longer see anything beyond the tangled crush of the dancers themselves. It tightened still further until Adam was completely hemmed in by the scrum of Green Men, their sticks interlocking above head height, forming a canopy that completely closed him in.

  Then the chanting started: quietly at first, sounding like a traditional song. Then it became louder, building in volume and intensity until Adam could make out what they were saying.

  “We know what you stole from us … give it back, give it back. We know what you stole … give it back, give it back.”

  Adam felt giddy as the chanting grew and the circle spun wildly round him.

  “We know what you stole…”

  He looked round madly, his heart thumping as fast as the dancer’s drum, searching for a way out and seeing none.

  “Give it back, give it back…”

  Adam’s stomach lurched when he suddenly registered a pair of very pale blue eyes, and he watched helplessly as another man began to detach himself from the circle. He saw the man raise his arm, but his scream was lost beneath the drone and the drumbeat, as a willow pole crashed down on to his head.

  As Adam came round, all he could hear were arguments. The loudest voice of all belonged to Chris Dalton.

  “Of course we’re not responsible. They should be insured against this kind of thing.”

  Then Adam heard another voice, a local one, apologizing, and explaining that he had lost the grip on his stick. Dalton called him a bloody fool. Then Adam heard Amanda’s voice. “He’s coming round…”

  Adam opened his eyes to see Amanda leaning over him, pressing a damp towel to his forehead.

  “Adam? You had a bit of a bump on the head. Don’t worry, I’m a qualified first-aider. You’ve got a nasty lump, but I think you’ll be OK. We’ll get you checked out. I’ve called a doctor.”

  Rachel appeared in Adam’s field of vision, panting, as if she had been running. Laura was standing behind her, and, seeing her, Adam tried to be brave and got up on to one elbow.

  “Don’t move, Adam,” Laura said. She laid a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. She looked concerned, but when she wheeled round to Amanda, the worry in her face turned quickly to anger. “What on earth happened here?”

  Amanda led Laura off into a huddle, whispering and pointing at the pair of remaining morris dancers who were packing their things away. Laura glared at them, and at Dalton.

  Rachel leant in close to her brother. “What happened, Adam?”

  “We’ve been betrayed, that’s what,” Adam whispered. “Someone’s told them we’ve found the blade.”

  “I don’t understand. Who?”

  “It’s got to be Jacob.”

  “No,” Rachel said. “Jacob wouldn’t.” She shook her head, kept shaking it, but at the same time she was wondering whether Jacob would. He had been the one who had invited the TV crew to the village, after all.

  “Then it’s your lovely Gabriel, isn’t it?” Adam hissed. “He’s the only other person on earth who knows.”

  Rachel said nothing. G
abriel had been quiet for days. There had been no messages since the television crew had arrived in the village.

  She looked across the moor to where the cars were parked. A tall morris dancer in a long leather coat and top hat, his face completely blackened, was watching her. When he realized Rachel had seen him, he raised his hat to her, before climbing on to a big motorbike and roaring off.

  Adam climbed slowly to his feet. “It’s not really important who told them anyway,” he said. “All that matters is that they’re prepared to kill us to get it.”

  Dalton peered into the tunnel that had already taken his team a solid three days to dig. And now it was starting to rain.

  “How much longer?” he shouted into the tunnel, shielding his hair from the drizzle with Amanda’s clipboard.

  Dalton was getting impatient. He didn’t like going into the tunnel. It was wet and dark. And scary. The dig had only just got back on track, having nearly been aborted after the incident with Adam and the morris men. It had taken all Dalton’s considerable charm to smooth things over following the accident. He’d sent a letter (actually written by Amanda) to Adam’s grandmother, together with a cheque for two hundred pounds which Mrs Root had immediately donated to the appeal to restore the church roof.

  Now there seemed to be some kind of delay. They were supposed to be transmitting the dig live on TV that night, on a special edition of Treasure Hunters. Dalton checked his watch. It was nearly six, and the first part of the show was due to go out at seven.

  “Can we hurry this up?” Dalton shouted to no one in particular. “We’re live in an hour.”

  Laura Sullivan, wearing a hard hat with a torch attached to the front like a coal miner, poked her head out of the tunnel. She was covered in mud.

  “We’ve got to be patient, Chris, OK? I think we’re at the entrance to a burial chamber. At least, there are bogoak props holding up something and barring our way.” Laura wiped specks of dirt from her eyes. “I’ve sent some splinters off for carbon testing to get a date on them.”