Stonehenge

by Bernard Cornwell

  “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 toward 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 toward 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 backward 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 toward 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 traveling 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.

  “Leir is coming with me,” Saban told her. “He is coming to Ratharryn. He will live with me there.”

  Aurenna looked surprised, then the surprise turned to anger. “He will live with you?” Her voice was dangerous.

  “And he will learn what I learned as a child,” Saban said. “He will learn how to use an axe, an adze and an awl. He will learn how to make a bow, how to kill a deer and how to wield a spear. He will become a man.”

  The oxen bellowed and the air stank of their dung and blood. The stone moved at less than a man’s walking pace, but it did move. “Leir!” Aurenna shouted. “Come here!”

  “Stay where you are,” Saban called to his son and hurried to catch up with the sledge.

  “He is to be a priest,” Aurenna shouted. She ran after Saban, jay feathers fluttering from her cloak.

  “He will become a man first,” Saban said, “and if, after he has become a man, he wishes to be a priest, then so be it. But my son will be a man before he is ever a priest.”

  “He can’t go with you!” Aurenna shrieked. Saban had never seen her angry before, indeed he had not believed there was such fierce emotion inside her, but now she screamed at him and her hair was wild and her face distorted. “How can he live with you? You have a slave woman in your bed!” She pointed at Kilda and Hanna, who were following the sledge along with the folk of Cathallo who were eagerly listening to the argument. Leir was still on the stone from where he gazed at his parents while Lallic hid her small face in Aurenna’s skirts. “You keep a slave whore and her bastard!” Aurenna howled.

  “But at least I don’t dress in a bull-dancer’s cloak to cover her!” Saban snapped. “She is my whore, not Slaol’s whore!”

  Aurenna stopped and the anger on her face turned to a cold fury. She drew back her hand to strike Saban across the face, but he seized her wrist. “You took yourself from my bed, woman, because you claimed a man would frighten Lahanna away. I did what you wanted then, but I will not let you deny my son his manhood. He is my son and he will be a man.”

  “He will be a priest!” There were tears in Aurenna’s eyes now. “Lahanna demands it!”

  Saban saw that he was hurting her with his grip, so he let her wrist go. “If the goddess wants him to be a priest,” he said, “then he will be a priest, but he will be a man first.” He turned on the ox herdsmen who had abandoned their animals to watch the confrontation. “Watch the hauling lines!” he shouted. “Don’t let them slow down. Leir! Get down, use your goad, work!” He walked away from Aurenna, who stood still, crying. Saban was trembling, half fearing a terrible curse, but Aurenna just turned and led Lallic back to her home.

  “She will want revenge,” Kilda warned him.

  “She will try to take her son back, that is all. But he won’t go. He won’t go.”

  It took twenty-three days to move the long stone to Ratharryn and Saban stayed with the great sledge for most of the journey, but when they were a day or two away from the Sky Temple he hurried ahead with Kilda, Hanna and Leir for he knew that the temple’s entrance would need to be widened if the stone was to be hauled through. The ditch by the entrance would have to be filled and the portal stones taken down, and he wanted both jobs done before the long boulder arrived.

  The stone arrived two days later and Saban had forty slaves start sculpting it into a pillar. It might have been roughly shaped in Cathallo, but now it must be made smooth, polished and tapering. A dozen other slaves began to dig the socket for the stone, delving deep into the chalk under the soil.

  Saban did not go down to the settlement, nor did Camaban come to the temple in the first days after the long stone had arrived, but Saban could smell the trouble in the air like the stench of a tanner’s pit. Those folk who did come from the settlement avoided Saban, or else they forced idle conversation and seemed not to notice that Leir was now living with his father. The slaves worked, Saban pretended there was no danger and the stone shrank into its smooth shape.

  The first frosts came. The sky looked washed and pale, and then at last Camaban did come to the temple. He came with a score of spearmen, all dressed for battle and led by Vakkal, his spear decorated with the scalps of men he had killed in the battle at Cathallo. Camaban, swathed in his father’s bear cloak, had a bronze sword at his waist. His hair was bushy and wild, its tangles threaded with children’s bones, which also hung from his beard that now had a badger’s streak of white. He signaled for his spearmen to wait by the sun stone, then limped on toward Saban. A single young priest came with him, carrying the skull pole.

  There was silence as Camaban crossed the entrance causeway between the two pillars that had been thrown down so that the longer stones could be hauled into the circle. His face was angry. The slaves close to Saban backed away, leaving him alone beside the mother stone where Camaban stopped to look around the temple, the priest with the skull pole two paces behind. “No stones have been raised.” His voice was mild but he frowned at Saban. “Why have no stones been raised?”

  “They must be shaped first.”

  “Those are shaped,” Camaban said, pointing his mace at some of the pillars for the sky circle.

  “If they are raised,” Saban said, “then they will get in the way of the larger stones. Those must be raised first.”

  Camaban nodded. “But where are the longer stones?” His tone was reasonable, as though he had no quarrel with Saban, but that reticence only increased the threat of his presence.

  “The first is here,” Saban said, pointing to the monstrous boulder, which lay amidst piles of stone chips and dust. “Mereth has taken the big sledge back to Cathallo and will be bringing another. But that one” – he nodded at the longest stone – “will be raised before midwinter.”

  Camaban nodded again, apparently satisfied. He drew his sword, walked to the long stone and began to sharpen the blade on the rock’s edge. “I have talked with Aurenna,” he said, his voice still calm, “and she told me a strange tale.”

  “About Leir?” Saban asked, bristling and defensive as he tried to hide his nervousness.

  “She told me about Leir, of course she did.” Camaban paused to feel the edge of his blade, found it blunt and began scraping the sword on the stone again. It made a ringing noise. “But I agree with you about Leir, brother,” he went on, glancing at Saban, “he should be a man. I don’t see him as a priest. He has no dreams like his sister. He is more like you. But I don’t think he should live with you. He needs to learn a warrior’s ways and a hunter’s paths. He can live in Gundur’s household.”

  Saban nodded cautiously. Gundur was not a cruel man and his sons were growing into honest men. “He can live in Gundur’s hut,” he agreed.

  “No,” Camaban said, frowning at a small nick in the sword’s edge, “the strange tale that Aurenna told me was about Derrewyn.” He looked up at Saban. “She still lives. Did you know that?”

  “How would I know?” Saban asked.

  “But her child is not with her,” Camaban said. He had straightened from the stone and was staring into Saban’s eyes now. “Her child, it seems, was sent to live in a settlement because Derrewyn feared it would sicken and die in the forests. So she sent it away. To Cathallo, do you think? Or maybe here? To Ratharryn? The tale is whi
spered in Cathallo’s huts, brother, but Aurenna hears all. Have you heard that tale, Saban?”

  “No.”

  Camaban smiled, then made a gesture with his sword and Saban turned to see that two spearmen had found Hanna and were dragging her from the hut. Kilda was screaming at them, but a third man barred her way as the terrified child was brought to Camaban. Saban moved to take the child from the spearmen, but one of them held his weapon toward Saban while the other gave the child to Camaban who first gripped her, then laid his newly sharpened sword across her throat. “Her mother, if that woman of yours is her mother,” Camaban said, “has fair hair. This child is dark.”

  Saban touched his own black hair.

  Camaban shook his head. “She is too old to be your child, Saban, not unless you met the mother before we ever began to build the temple.” He tightened the pressure of the sword and Hanna gasped. “Is she Derrewyn’s bastard child, Saban?” Camaban asked.

  “No,” Saban said.

  Camaban laughed softly. “You were Derrewyn’s lover once,” he said, “and maybe you still love her? Enough, perhaps, to help her?”

  “And you wanted to marry her once, brother,” Saban hissed, “but that does not mean you would help her now.” Saban saw Camaban’s astonishment that he knew of his offer of marriage to Derrewyn, and the astonishment made him smile. “Would you like me to shout that news aloud, brother?”

  Hanna screamed as Camaban twitched with anger. “Do you threaten me, Saban?” he asked.

  “Me?” Saban laughed. “Threaten you, the sorcerer? But how will you build this temple, brother, if you fight me? You can build a tripod? You can line a hole with timber? You can harness oxen? You know how the stone breaks naturally? You, who boast that you have never held an axe in your life, can build this temple?”

  Camaban laughed at the question. “I can find a hundred men to raise stones!” he said scornfully.

  Saban smiled. “Then let those hundred men tell you how they will raise one stone upon another.” He pointed to the long stone. “When that pillar is raised, brother, it will stand four times the height of a man. Four times! And how will you lift another stone to rest on its summit? Do you know?” He looked past Camaban and shouted the question even louder. “Do any of you know?” He called to the spearmen. “Vakkal? Gundur? Can you tell me? How will you raise a capstone to the summit of that pillar? And not just one capstone, but a whole ring of stones! How will you do it? Answer me!”