Stonehenge - Bernard Cornwell

Derrewyn's voice spoke behind him, 'My uncle has a sword just like that. He says it was made in the land across the western sea.'

Saban twisted round and stared up at her. 'Your uncle?' He asked.

'Kital, chief of Cathallo.' She paused. 'Of course.' She crouched beside him and placed a delicate finger to the blue-red scabs of his new tattoos. 'Did that hurt?' she asked.

'No,' Saban boasted.

'It must have done.'

'A little,' he conceded.

'Better those scars than being killed by Jegar,' Derrewyn said.

'He wouldn't have killed me,' Saban said. 'He just wanted to drag me back to Ratharryn and make me carry the chalk to my father.'

'I think he would have killed you,' Derrewyn said, then gave him a sidelong glance. 'Did you cut his hand?'

'In a way,' Saban admitted, smiling.

She laughed. 'Geil says he might never use the hand again properly.' Geil was Hengall's oldest wife and the woman with whom Derrewyn lived, and she had famous skills as a healer. 'She told Jegar he should go to Sannas because she's much more powerful.' Derrewyn plucked some daisies. 'Did you know Sannas has straightened your brother's foot?'

'She did?' Saban asked in surprise.

'She cut his foot right open,' Derrewyn said. 'There was blood everywhere! She did it on the night of the full moon and he didn't make a sound and afterwards they strapped his foot to some deer bones and he had a fever.' She began making the daisies into a chain. 'He got better,' she added.-

'How do you know?' Saban asked.

'A trader brought the news while you were in the woods,' she said. She paused to slit a daisy's stem with a sharp fingernail. 'And he said Sannas is angry with your brother.'

'Why?'

'Because Camaban just walked away,' Derrewyn said with a frown. 'Even before the foot was healed he just walked away, and no one knows where he's gone. Sannas thought he might have come here.'

'I haven't seen him,' Saban said, and felt somehow disgruntled that he had not heard this news of his brother before, or perhaps he was disappointed that Camaban had not come to Ratharryn, though he could think of no reason why he should want to visit his father's tribe. But Saban liked his awkward, stuttering half-brother and felt distressed that Camaban had gone away without any leave-taking. 'I wish he had come here,' Saban said.

Derrewyn shuddered. 'I only met him once,' she said, 'and I thought he was frightening.'

'He's just clumsy,' Saban said and half smiled. 'I used to take him food and he liked to try and frighten me. He'd gibber and jump about, pretending to be mad.'

'Pretending?'

'He likes to pretend.'

She shrugged, then shook her head as if Camaban's fate were of no importance. South of the temple a group of men were tearing the wool from the backs of sheep, making the beasts bleat pitifully. Derrewyn laughed at the naked-looking animals, and Saban watched her, marvelling at the delicacy of her face and the smoothness of her sun-browned legs. She was no older than he was, yet it seemed to Saban that Derrewyn had a confidence he lacked. Derrewyn herself pretended not to notice that she was being admired, but just turned to look at the Old Temple where Gilan was being helped by Galeth and his son, Mereth, who was just a year younger than Saban. Just a year, though because Saban was now a man the gap between him and Mereth seemed much wider.

Gilan and his two helpers were trying to find the centre of the shrine, and to do it they had stretched a string of woven bark fibre across the grassy circle within the inner bank. Once they were sure that they had discovered the widest space across the circle they doubled the string and tied a piece of grass about its looped end. That way they knew they had a line that was as long as the circle was wide, and that the grass knot marked the exact centre of the line, and now they were stretching the line again and again across the circle's width in an attempt to find the temple's centre. Galeth held one end of the string, Mereth the other, and Gilan stood in the middle for ever wanting to know if his two helpers were standing right beside the bank, or on it, or just beyond it, and whenever he was satisfied that they were in their right places he would mark where the scrap of grass was tied about the string by planting a stick in the ground. There were now a dozen sticks, all within a few hands' lengths of each other, though no two were marking exactly the same place and Gilan kept taking new measurements in the hope of finding two points that agreed.

'Why do they need to find the middle of the temple?' Saban asked.

'Because on midsummer's morning,' Derrewyn said, 'they'll find exactly where Slaol rises and then they'll draw a line from there to the temple's centre.' She was a priest's daughter and knew such things. Gilan had now decided on one of the many sticks, so he plucked the others out of the soil before clumsily banging a stake into the ground to mark the shrine's centre. It seemed that was the extent of this day's work, for Gilan now rolled the string into a ball and, after muttering a prayer, walked back towards Ratharryn.

'You want to go hunting?' Galeth called to Saban.

'No,' Saban called back.

'Getting lazy now you're a man?' Galeth asked good-naturedly, then waved and followed the high priest.

'You don't want to hunt?' Derrewyn asked Saban.

'I'm a man now,' Saban said. 'I can have my own hut, keep cattle and slaves, and I can take a woman into the forest.'

'A woman?' Derrewyn asked.

'You,' he said. He stood, picked up his spear, then held out his hand.

Derrewyn looked at him for a heartbeat. 'What happened last night in Slaol's temple?'

'There were seventeen men,' Saban said, 'and fourteen girls. I slept.'

'Why?'

'I was waiting for you,' he said and his heart was full and tremulous for it seemed that what he did now was far more dangerous than sleeping in the dark trees among the Outfolk and outcast enemies. He touched the necklace of sea-shells she had given him. I was waiting for you,' he said again.

She stood. For an instant Saban thought she would turn away, but then she smiled and took his hand. 'I've never been into the forest,' she said.

'Then it is time you went,' Saban said, and led her eastwards. He was a man.

Saban and Derrewyn went eastwards across Mai's river, then north past the settlement until they reached a place where the valley was steep and narrow and thick trees arched high above the running water. Sunlight splashed through the leaves. The call of the corncrakes in the wheatfields had long faded and all they could hear now was the river's rippling and the whisper of the wind and the scrabble of squirrels' claws and the staccato flap of a pigeon bursting through the high leaves. Orchids grew purple among the water mint at the river's edge while the haze of the fading bluebells clouded the shadows beneath the trees. Kingfishers whipped bright above the river where red-dabbed moorhen chicks paddled between the rushes.

Saban took Derrewyn to an island in the river, a place where willow and ash grew thick above a bank of long grass and thick moss. They waded to the island, then lay on the moss and Derrewyn watched air bubbles breaking the leaf-shadowed water where otters twisted after fish. A doe came to the farther bank, but sprang away before she drank because Derrewyn sighed too loudly in admiration. Then Derrewyn wanted to catch fish, so she took Saban's new spear and stood in the shallows and every now and then she would plunge the blade down at a trout or a grayling, but always missed. 'Aim below them,' Saban told her.

'Below them?'

'See how the spear bends in the water?'

'It just looks that way,' she said, then lunged, missed again and laughed. The spear was heavy and it tired her, so she tossed it onto the bank, then just stood letting the river run about her brown knees. 'Do you want to be chief here?' she asked Saban after a while.

He nodded. 'I think so, yes.'

She turned to look at him. 'Why?'

Saban did not have an answer. He had become accustomed to the idea, that was all. His father was chief, and though that did not mean that one of Hengall's sons should necessarily be the next chief, the tribe would look to those sons first and Saban was now the only one who might succeed. 'I think I want to be like my father,' he said carefully. 'He's a good chief.'

'What makes a good chief?'

'You keep people alive in winter,' Saban said, 'you cut back the forests, you judge disputes fairly and protect the tribe from enemies.'

'From Cathallo?' Derrewyn asked.

'Only if Cathallo threatens us.'

'They won't. I shall make sure of that.'

'You will?'

'Kital likes me, and one of his sons will be the next chief and they're all my cousins, and they all like me.' She looked at him shyly, as though he would find that surprising. 'I shall insist that we all be friends,' she said fiercely. 'It's stupid being enemies. If men want to fight they should go and find the Outfolk.' She suddenly splashed him with water. 'Can you swim?'

'Yes.'

'Teach me.'

'Just throw yourself in,' Saban said.

'And I'll drown,' she said. 'Two men in Cathallo drowned once and we didn't find them for days and they were all swollen.' She pretended to half lose her balance, 'And I'll be like them, all swollen and nibbled by fish and it'll be your fault because you wouldn't teach me to swim.'

Saban laughed, but stood and stripped off his new wolfskin tunic. Until a few days before he had always gone naked in summer, but now he felt embarrassed without the tunic. He ran fast into the water that was wonderfully cold after the heat under the trees and swam away from Derrewyn, going into a deep pool where the river swirled in dark ripples. Splashing to keep his head above water, once he had reached the pool's centre, he turned to call Derrewyn into the river, only to find that she was already there, very close behind him. She laughed at his shocked expression. 'I learned to swim a long time ago,' she said, then took a deep breath, ducked her head and kicked her bare legs into the air so that she could dive down beneath Saban. She too was naked.

Saban splashed back to the island where he lay on his belly in the grass. He watched Derrewyn dive and swim, and still watched her as she came to the river's edge and slowly walked from the water with her long black hair sleek and dripping. To Saban she appeared like the river goddess Mai herself, coming from the water in awesome beauty, and then she knelt beside him, making the skin of his back shiver where her hair touched the burn scars on his shoulder blades. He lay very still, conscious of her, but scarce daring to move in case he frightened her away. This, he told himself, was why he had asked her to come into the forest, though now that the moment was on him he was consumed by nervousness. Derrewyn must have known what he was thinking for she touched his shoulder, making him turn over, then she lowered herself into his arms. 'You ate the clay, Saban,' she whispered, her wet hair cold on his shoulders, 'so the skull's curse cannot touch you.'

'You know that?'

'I promise that,' she whispered, and he shivered because it seemed to him as if Mai really had come in her splendour from the water. He held her close, very close, and like a fool he thought his joy could last for ever.

—«»—«»—«»—

That afternoon, as Derrewyn and Saban waited for the sun to sink and the twilight to bring the shadows through which they could creep secretly home, they heard singing from the hill above the river's western bank. They dressed, waded across the branch of the river, and climbed towards the sound that became louder with their every step. The two went slowly and cautiously, but they need not have worried about being seen for the singers were too intent on their task to notice two lovers among the leaves.

The singers were women from Cathallo and they were lined up either side of seventy sweating men who were hauling on long ropes of twisted leather which were attached to a great oak sledge on which the first of Ratharryn's eight stones sat. It was one of the smaller stones, yet its weight was such that the men were heaving and grunting to keep the cumbersome sledge moving along the rough woodland path. Other men went ahead to smooth the way, cutting out roots and kicking down tussocks of grass, but after a while the men on the ropes were simply too exhausted to continue. They had hauled all day, they had even pulled the great sledge up the hill south of Maden, and now they were spent so they left the sledge in the middle of the wood and walked south towards Ratharryn where they expected to be fed. Derrewyn gripped Saban's arm. 'I'll go with them,' she whispered.

'Why?'

'Then I can say I came to meet them. That way no one will wonder where I've been.' She reached up, kissed his cheek, then ran after the retreating people.

Saban waited until they had gone, then went and stroked the stone on its oak sledge. It was warm to the touch and, where the sun pierced the leaves to shine on the boulder, tiny flecks of light glinted in the rock. Touching the stone coincided with a great surge of happiness. He was a man, and he had a woman as beautiful as any in the land. He had held Derrewyn on the river's bank and it seemed to Saban that life was as rich and hopeful as it could ever be. The gods loved him.

Hengall hardly felt that the gods loved him for that evening a great crowd of Cathallo folk arrived at Ratharryn and they all needed to be fed and given places to sleep and he had not realized, when he paid the gold pieces for the eight stones, that they would cost him so much in food. He also had to provide more folk to help haul the stones, and those were found among the poorer families in the settlement and they had to be paid in meat and grain. Hengall saw his herds diminish and he began to doubt the wisdom of his bargain, but he did not try to repudiate it. He sent men to haul the stones and, day by day as the summer neared its height, the great boulders crept towards Ratharryn.

The four larger stones proved difficult. There was a path across the stream-cut marshlands near Maden, but it was too narrow for the bigger stones and so Kital's men hauled those boulders far to the west before turning south towards Ratharryn. But there was a hill in their path, not so steep as the hill up which the four smaller stones had already been hauled, but still a formidable obstacle that proved too much for the men dragging the first of the big boulders. More ropes were fetched and more men were harnessed to the sledge, but still the stone would not shift up the slope. They tried pulling the sledge with oxen, but when the beasts took the strain they bunched together and impeded each other and it was not until Galeth devised the idea of harnessing the oxen to a great bar of oak, and then attaching ropes from the oak bar to the sledge, that they managed to shift the great stone and so drag it to the hilltop where, with its runners now crushing the level grass, it was hauled onwards. The other three heavy stones were fetched in the same way. The priests hung flowers from the oxen's horns, the beasts were surrounded by singers and there was joy in Ratharryn for the summer was kind, the stones had come safely and it seemed that the ill omens of the past had all faded.