Darkhenge

Chief bard am I among the bards of Elphin,

My country the region of the summer stars.

THE BOOK OF TALIESIN

On Sunday there was mass, and then lunch. Father Mac always came because Maria did the best roast in Wiltshire, and afterward he and Rob sometimes walked out on the downs or along the Ridgeway. Rob didn’t want that today. He realized he didn’t really want to be alone with Mac at all, because his godfather was a man who knew him too well, could read his moods. Mac already knew something was wrong.

Loitering about at the back of church, he helped an old man collect hymn books and watched his mother chatting to her friends at the door. As always she was perfect, her hair glossy, her makeup professionally expert. Looking at her, he saw how she animated each sentence, bore the weekly sympathy, the brittle pretense that they were coping, she was coping. He couldn’t do that. Maybe people guessed, because none of them ever said anything about Chloe to him.

Dad was outside, in the car. He couldn’t do the chatting either.

Mac came down the side aisle in black shirt and trousers and old sandals that flapped. He whipped a pile of newspapers into a bin, growled a few gruff reminders to various parishioners, and said, “Let’s go.”

As they turned, Rob saw Vetch.

The poet was standing under the statue of Saint Francis, looking up at the kindly wooden face. Saint Francis had birds on his shoulders, tiny wooden sparrows that Rob had always liked ever since he was a kid, when he had daydreamed during long dull sermons that they came alive and flew around the church.

Vetch looked over. Their eyes met.

Rob went tense.

Let them fly, Vetch had said last night, in the cascade of bats. Now, in an instant of crystal clarity Rob knew that he—he, Rob—could do that, that he could make the birds come alive and rise from the saint’s shoulders if he wanted to, if he could gather up all the power that was in him. If he had faith the size of a mustard seed.

“Who’s he?” Mac was behind him, a warm bulk.

Rob blinked. Then he said, “The one I told you about. The druid.”

Father Mac was still a moment. Then he crossed to where Vetch was inserting a lighted candle into a holder. The poet’s fingers were thin and delicate; the flame guttered, shadowing his face.

“Good to see a stranger in church.”

Vetch’s calm eyes lifted. “I’ve been here before.”

“Really?”

“Many times. Over the centuries.”

Mac nodded. His big face was expressionless. Nothing ever threw him. “There must be something that attracts you here then.”

Vetch glanced at Rob. “Avebury is a hub of spiritual power, a landscape rayed with dreams and visions.” He looked back at Mac, and they were eye to eye, the poet thin and dark, the priest’s thick bulk. “But of course you know that, Father.”

Rob was surprised at Mac’s slow nod. Vetch said, “See you tomorrow, Rob,” smiled, crossed himself, and went out through the main wooden door.

“Thought you said he was a pagan,” Mac said thoughtfully.

“I don’t know what he is.”

“What’s this about tomorrow?” His godfather was always abrupt; this time it annoyed Rob.

“Nothing. I promised I’d take him somewhere.”

“A centuries-old wanderer should know all the places around here.” Mac turned. “Stay clear of him, Rob. He’s not the harmless nutcase I was expecting.” His voice sounded oddly somber, but just then Katie came over.

“Ready?”

“For food, anytime,” Mac growled.

It rained later, so after-lunch drinks were in the summerhouse, a decaying blue wooden pavilion under the cedar tree. Rob sat astride the bench and arranged the painting on the easel, then scraped dried paint off the palette.

Mac was supposed to be sitting for his portrait; Rob had been working on it for months, but his enthusiasm came and went. Today, though, he wanted to lose himself in color. He’d drawn the face easily enough, but the more he looked the more greens and reds and even blues there were deep in the mottled flesh. It fascinated him, filled him with despair.

“You’ll never finish that,” his father muttered.

“I’ve got to. It’s for the portfolio.”

Mac sat, took out a cigarette and lit it. “Don’t paint this in, mind.”

“Do you have to? It changes all the shadows.”

“Tough.”

Rob’s mother stood. “I’ll give Maria a hand with clearing up.”

“You’ll do no such thing, Kate Mcguire. This husband of yours will do that. You’ll have a lie down. You’re too pale, girl.”

“And you’re a bully, Mac. You talk as if I was still a little girl in Ireland.”

“You’ll always be a little girl to me.”

“Idiot.” She went out, walking fast across the lawn, head down against the fine summer rain, and Rob’s dad went after her.

Mac smoked thoughtfully. “She sleeps all right?”

“I don’t know.”

He painted in silence. Rain fell heavily on the glass roof, spattering hard, sheeting in cascades down the gutters and gurgling in drainpipes. The sky darkened; Rob muttered, “Typical,” and mixed a little more viridian into the color for the lines between Mac’s nose and mouth. The mouth moved.

“They’ve got money troubles, Rob.”

Rob looked up. “No way!”

“How much do you think full-time nursing care costs? Your mother’s turned down work. A film, she said.”

“She told you?”

A cloud of cigarette smoke. Through it Mac said, “In confidence. But you should know. This job of yours—save the cash. Don’t ask them for anything.”

The rain crashed. Rob muttered, “I wish you’d shave. Stubble is a nightmare.”

He was stunned. They’d always had money. More than enough. His mother was well known, she’d won a BAFTA, her agent was always on the phone with offers. He worked red into blue, lightened it, darkened it.

Money defined him. Dan was always broke, his mother a single parent. Rob paid for everything—it was never an issue. Well, not for him. Maybe Dan resented it. He’d never noticed.

Putting the paint on carefully, he said, “They won’t stop paying for Chloe.”

“Of course not. But it’s ruining them. The longer it goes on.”

His hands were shaking. He couldn’t do this now: he put the brush down with a clatter that made Mac look over, and then he sat down on the faded blue bench as if the strength had all gone out of him. He knew what this was. It happened when he let himself realize that Chloe was lying there, little Chloe, never moving, never speaking. Right now. Right now.

Mac said, “Okay?”

“Great. Just great.”

The rain came down harder. Mac got up and stood looking out. Then he gave his harsh laugh. “Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse, here’s Dan.”

Dan was on the bike. He was going up to the house, but at Rob’s shout he came wobbling toward them over the grass, dumped the machine against the streaming glass and stumbled in, soaked to the skin.

Mac ground out his cigarette stub on the step. “Ever heard of a coat?”

“Coats are for wimps.” Dan sat, oozing water. “Anyway, it just came up over Waden and caught me. It was dry when I set out.” He squeezed out his hair, which he was growing long, because any heavy metal guitarist was nothing without long hair. “Brought you this.”

It was a Sunday paper, a tabloid. Rob’s dad wouldn’t have it in the house.

“A rag,” Mac said sourly.

“Yes, but look.” Dan folded the paper to an inside page and pointed. The headline was small but lurid. It screamed, SECRET SACRIFICIAL SITE UNCOVERED: WHAT WILD AND WEIRD RITES WENT ON IN DEEPEST WILTSHIRE?

“Oh God,” Rob said.

The photographer must have been standing in the lane. Maybe Max had kept him out. But you could see the top of the hedge, and across the field the high metal fence.

Behind this enigmatic structure lies British archaeology’s newest and best-kept secret. Older than the pyramids, in the heart of mystic Avebury the black timbers of a lost prehistoric monument are being uncovered in strictest secrecy.

“Where did they get it?” He thought of Clare. She would be so furious!

Dan rolled his eyes. “This is Avebury. People out all hours looking for crop circles, UFOs, little green men. It was bound to get around.”

“This is where you’re working?” Mac studied the article with distaste. “Why the fixation with human sacrifice? Don’t they think our ancestors had other things to do?”

“I’ll be the next one,” Rob muttered. “She’ll think it was me.”

“That’s hardly reasonable.”

He laughed, mirthless. “She’s not the reasonable type.”

“But it wasn’t you. Was it?”

Rob glanced up. His godfather’s blue eyes were watching him.

“No,” he said quietly. “It wasn’t.”

Next morning a security guard was at the end of the lane with a cell phone. He checked with someone on the other end before letting Rob through. Wheeling the bike, Rob wondered if it was legal to stop people. After all, this was a right of way.

The field was unrecognizable. A perimeter fence was going up, and the old wooden gate he and Vetch and Rosa had climbed over two nights ago was already replaced with a high metal one. Marcus came out of the trailer, and said, “I really hope you had nothing to do with this.”

“Don’t be stupid. I wouldn’t come back if I had. Don’t you think all the security is a bit over the top? Or is Clare spitting nails?”

Marcus’s eyes flickered, too late. He walked off.

“I warned you, Rob.” Clare was standing behind him. Her cold glare chilled him. “I’m surprised you dare show your face.”

“It wasn’t me!”

“Who then? The dog?”

“Anyone. The farmer could have gossiped in the pub. National Trust people, your students, anyone. It’s not fair to blame me, but if you want me to go, I’ll go.” And stuff your job, he thought, turning, skewing the bike in the mud, hot and angry. Guilty.

Her voice stopped him dead. “This Vetch. Does he have a small scar on his forehead? Does he have three burns on the back of his hand?”

After a moment he said, “Yes.”

She swore.

The key. He had to get the key back.

He turned to face her.

She looked tired and fed up. “You told him?”

“No, I didn’t. He knew already. Honestly.”

To his surprise she laughed, a harsh amusement. “Oh, I believe you. And no doubt he’s found a few new devotees. Women probably. Hanging on every word he says.”

Rob rubbed the handlebar of the bike. “Was that what you used to do?”

He thought she’d be furious. Instead she said, “Oh yes. I was a student, Rob, in my last year at uni. And I was the best in my year, a highflier, expected to get a first. Everyone expected me to be anything I wanted.”

She sat on an upturned bucket, glanced around to see where Jimmy was, then lowered her voice. “I met …Vetch in Oxford. His name was Gwion then. He wasn’t a student, or a tutor, but he did occasional things for the Department of Celtic … readings, talks on Welsh poetry. That was his thing. We … got to be friends.”

Rob found it hard to imagine. She must have been a lot less hard.

“Looking back, he was fascinating. He talked about poetry, about how the Celtic myths might go right back to prehistoric times, that the stories in them, of goddesses, and battles with trees and glass castles, were legends told by people who built the henges. Bronze Age. Maybe even Neolithic.” She laughed, sour. “I thought he was right. I neglected my studies. I read myths, wrote essays that my tutors despaired of, full of theories, the more unlikely the better.... I wore crazy dresses and went to festivals, lived in squalor. And yes, got into drugs, though Vetch never was. But I had to keep up with him. He lived in a dreamworld of ideas and stories. All I wanted was his respect. And then one day he vanished. Just upped and left. I was devastated. I suppose it was a miracle I even took the exams in the end.”

She was silent so long he said, “You failed?”

“I got a third. A third! I could forget trying to get a research post. I was a third-rate archaeologist with no job, no credibility and nowhere to live.” She tugged her braid out, and tied it up again quickly, her fingers working nervously. “It’s taken me years to work my way back up, and no one is going to ruin it. Especially him.” As if she was embarrassed, had said too much, she stood quickly. “However it happened, the news is out, I can’t stop it. And we need you, Rob. Now more than ever. We have to work at top speed; every bloody pressure group, coven, and chapter will be here in hours. We have to get the henge timbers out of the ground. Once that’s done they can hold all the press conferences they want. It will be too late.”

The idea of the henge being uprooted terrified him. But he just nodded and went to lock up the bike.

The hole the bats had streamed out of was gone; Jimmy had troweled it away. Rob didn’t ask about it. They worked ferociously all morning. The rattle and crash of the fence builders shattered the quiet of the site, but behind that were other new noises: voices in the lane, cars, the trill of Clare’s cell phone. Once, when she was sitting on the bank arguing into it fiercely, Rob walked out of the inner fence toward the portable toilet, but at the last minute slid into the office and got the key into the back of the drawer in seconds. It would take more than a key to get in here now. It would take a parachute.

Someone else had the same idea. At about eleven a helicopter came over, cruising low.

Clare swore in fury. “My God, these people have got a nerve.”

Someone was leaning out of it with a camera.

“TV?” Rob muttered.

“Probably. I refused them access. They’ll have a good view of the henge from up there though.”

Darkhenge was alive. That was how it seemed to him. Hour by hour the timbers were growing, soaring up out of the churned peat. By midmorning they were as tall as he was, and if you were outside you could no longer see in. Solid and glistening under its mist of water, the wooden henge stood erect, the ancient knotholes and gnarled scars where branches had been lopped still seamed with hatchet marks. Crouched, troweling, his arms and back aching, Rob sliced the fudgelike mud, his eyes attuned to the faintest differences in color, knowing already the sludgy smears of clay, the knobbliness of mud-coated flint nodules, the stench of leeched worms. His overalls were saturated, the knees so clotted with wet soil he could feel it on the inside. He knelt in it, and his fingers were ingrained with earth in every crack of his skin and under his nails, so that he no longer recognized them as his. There was nothing to do but dig. The world outside had faded away. Here, in the clogged wet warmth of the henge, there was only the uncovering, a feverish, obsessive desire.

They snatched a few muddy sandwiches at about noon, and Jimmy brought mugs of tea out. Drinking it, Rob felt himself come back from somewhere; when Clare and Marcus spoke he had to listen hard to understand the words, as if their sounds held meanings only slowly recognized.

Was this how it felt to come out of a coma? To awake, months, years, centuries later? He frowned, tipping the last drips of tea onto the mud like an offering. It wasn’t like him to think like that. Archaeology gave you too much time to think.

By three o’clock the henge timbers were higher than his head. All afternoon the muggy heat thickened, the sky grew overcast and heavy, zigzagged with midges and flying ants. His skin crawled and prickled with heat rash and itches. Surely the prehistoric ground level must be close now. Thinking of what Vetch had said, he glanced at Marcus, who was dreamily scraping in the center. “Found anything there?”

The man looked up, startled. “No. Clean as a whistle.”

“What might there be?”

Marcus shrugged, and Jimmy stabbed his trowel in the soil and stood, stretching, as if the words had broken a spell. “Possibly a foundation burial. It’s usually a child, or young woman. Or there may just be a deposit, some antler, those weird chalk balls.”

A rustle disturbed him. Birds fluttered down, small birds. Jackdaws. They were coming from the trees in the next field, a flock, swooping, and as Rob turned his head he saw that they were landing on the henge timbers, a pecking, flapping circle, rising and settling, never still. The men watched, amazed, in a ring of birds. Marcus jumped up, but the jackdaws didn’t take fright, not until Clare clanged the metal gate and came up to the henge, and at that moment the whole flock rose into the air like a cloud, circling, chattering, screeching.

Then they flew away.

“God,” Jimmy said. “This place is weird.”

Close, toward the downs, thunder rumbled.

“We’re going to have to stop.” Clare’s face was set, her blond hair streaked with mud. She shook her head irritably. “Everyone’s on the phone. The Trust, English Heritage, the papers, my head of department. They all want in. Our cover’s blown.”

She sat, disconsolate, on the wet soil. “If I ever find out who leaked this—”

“Will they sack you?” Rob asked quickly.

“I don’t think so. But it won’t be my baby now.” Thunder rumbled again; she looked up. “Weather’s closing in anyway. We’ll shut down for today. There’ll be full security here overnight.”

Jimmy whistled. “Expensive.”

Marcus picked up his trowel, crouched, looked carefully, scraped with it.

They all watched him. His body had suddenly become intent. Even Rob recognized it.

“What?” Clare hissed.

“Not sure. Looks like the central deposit.”

“Oh bloody hell! What a time to find it.”

They knelt beside him. He scraped twice. Mud unpeeled like the pith of an orange.

Under it, a snake of wood curved into the soil.

“A carving?” Rob asked, astonished. Whatever he had expected, it wasn’t this.

The trowel opened another. And another. A tangle of wooden writhing, black ridges.

“Branches,” Marcus muttered, cutting quickly.

“No.” Clare had her face close to it, her fair hair falling onto the buried mystery. “Not branches. A tree, yes, but not branches. Roots.”

“Roots? But you mean…”

She looked at them, her face white in a crack of lightning. Her answer was a whisper, almost drowned by the roar of thunder. “A tree. Upside down.”