Darkhenge (13 page)

The camp under the beech trees was quiet. Smoke rose from a fire and a little girl played in some mud. The woman he remembered as Megan came out of a tent and stared as the bike slewed over.

“Where's Vetch?” Rob gasped.

“At the Cove. They're waiting for you.”

He stared, then turned and ran back inside the vast embankment, clicking open the gate on the right and squeezing into the long grass of the northeast quadrant of the massive Avebury ring. The grass was ankle high and tussocky, chewed by sheep who stared and wandered away from him, unbothered by people. Few stones still stood here, and visitors usually walked along the high bank looking down, the white trails of erosion clear in the chalk.

In the center of a fragmented inner ring an enormous triad of stones had once made an open-sided square, called the Cove. One was gone, fallen centuries ago; the two remaining stones leaned with their heads together, a right angle of mystery.

The Cauldron tribe was there. All of them, with backpacks, flags, banners, kindling, drums. One man held a vast cloud of multicolored balloons with
SAVE DARKHENGE
printed on them. Dogs barked; a few children ran around with streamers.

Vetch was sitting with his back against the larger Cove stone, looking up onto the Ridgeway. When he saw Rob, he stood.

Breathless, Rob doubled over.

“They've started?” Vetch said.

“This afternoon … chain saw…” He could barely speak. He could only think of Chloe, lying in bed. So unprotected. “Will it hurt her? This link…”

“Don't worry,” Vetch said quietly. But his face was white. He looked at Rosa. “Are you ready?”

She pulled a hairgrip open with her teeth and pushed it into her hair. “Ready. Cars are in the lane.”

Vetch nodded, then, seeing Rob frown, looked over his shoulder. Dan was jumping the fence from the road. Vetch picked up the crane-skin bag and slipped it in his pocket. “Not much time, Rob.”

Rob nodded. As Vetch and Rosa led the tribe through the grass, Dan ran up. “What's going on? What are you
doing
with this crowd?”

“Are you working this afternoon?”

“No. Why?”

“There's going to be some trouble at the dig.”

Dan's eyes lit. “Trouble? What sort?”

“Protests… I don't know. The henge is important, Dan. Vetch thinks he can wake Chloe, but the henge is part of it; we have to keep it safe and it's under threat. Will you come?” It was blurted out and he knew it sounded unhinged, because of the way Dan was looking at him.

“Chloe? Come on, Rob—”

“I know, I
know
, but he's… He can do it.”

Dan shrugged, bemused. “I never thought you'd get mixed up with all that crazy stuff. Does Father Mac know?”

“Mac!” Rob grabbed his arm, hauled him toward the lane. “We need him! Have you got your phone?”

After a moment Dan took it out. “Not much left on it.”

Rob pushed Mac's number, then, when the priest answered, said quickly, “It's the henge. It's in danger. Can you come?”

Mac hesitated. “I've got someone here. I'll come as soon as I can.”

“Do something else for me. In Chloe's room, under the covers, there's a book. Her diary. Bring it with you.”

Mac made a grunting noise. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“I'll be an hour or so. Stay calm.” Then, just before the phone went down, his voice growled, “And keep an eye on that bloody druid.”

They piled out of cars and vans, a noisy multicolored crowd surging up the lane. The security guard had barely time to open his mouth before he was firmly pushed into the hedge. The tribe swarmed into the field, onto the trailer, around the metal fence that protected the henge. One or two of them leaped up and pulled at it, tugging and yelling; it shook and Jimmy came running out. He stopped dead; Rob grinned at the dismay on his face.

Easing back into the shadow of the trees, he said, “What about me?”

“We need you on the inside,” Rosa said. “Go back to work as usual. Is this chain saw already on site?”

“There are tools in the van. It may be there.”

Rosa gave a jerk of her head; two of the tribe raced off.

“And the dog?”

“Don't worry about the dog,” Vetch said quietly. He was crouched against the hedge, looking pale. His breathing seemed shallow.

Rosa crouched by him, anxious. “Master, tell us what you want us to do.”

His fingers working open the drawstring, Vetch said, “I'm all right, Rosa. I can last out. As soon as the moon rises I can enter the henge, but we have to keep it untouched until then.” He tipped out a whorled shell, a beetle that crawled away, a piece of antler, and three white berries that looked like mistletoe. He scooped the berries up and ate them quickly. Pulling a face, as if they were sour, he looked at her. “
Untouched.
That means you have to make as much of a fuss as you can.”

“No problem! We've phoned every TV company and conservation group for miles around. Wiltshire Sound, pagans, archaeologists, locals. It'll be the biggest gathering here since the Silbury Hill work gangs packed up.”

Vetch smiled, and touched her arm lightly. “Thank you, Rosa.”

She blushed. “We'll get you back home, Master. I promise you. You should rest now.”

“One more thing.” He looked at Rob. “The henge has emerged. It's open. Other things may come through. Be warned.”

Rob nodded. He turned, straight into Dan, then pushed past him into the lane.

“Rob.” Breathless, Dan caught up and grabbed him. “He's sick, you can see that. On something too, probably. You mustn't… None of this has anything to do with Chloe…”

“He woke her.” Rob turned. “Just for a second. I was there, I saw it. And he can do it again.”

“You're… It's been so long. You're clutching at straws.”

Rob stopped. He looked up and knew his face was stricken and hard. “Yes. All right. Straws, pieces of twig, a timber henge, anything. It's all gone, Dan, all our lives, everything. We're like hollow people, getting up, going to work, eating, sleeping, and none of it's real, it's all pretending, acting. My mother's living out one of her films; my father's directing an invisible play. And all I can do is draw, because that makes sense of the terror; I can tidy it, arrange it on a page. Till Vetch came I hid it all away, inside colors, buried it under layers of paint. But it's like Darkhenge, it's emerging, second by second, and it's huge and all around me and I can't ignore it anymore.” His voice almost broke. “I can't!”

Dan was silent. Then he put an awkward hand out. “All right. I'm with you.”

Behind, in the field, the drums began to beat.

I should have guessed.

As we ran down the glass stair and the bubble-seamed tunnel, reflections of ourselves ran beside us, a figure with my lichen-stained hair, and another in the mask he wore under the other; a face made of ivy leaves.

Above, through the transparent roof, I could see all the roots of the forest, an unguessable tangle, a million filaments stretching and reaching down into the soil, from gnarled lumps vast as boulders to threads tinier than worms. The forest drank, and in its depths snakes slid and insects burrowed. Billions of ants scurried like thoughts below it; its millennia of leaves fell and crushed and soaked and rotted.

He stopped so suddenly I banged into him, breathless.

“Listen!”

He caught my arm. Far off, the faintest whine. As if in the forest someone had started up a saw, had begun to cut the trees.

I couldn't answer. Pain was soaking my side. Blood dripped from my arm.

“Chloe!” he gasped.

I have been a roebuck on the hill,
I have been a tree stump …
I have been an axe in the hand.

T
HE
B
OOK OF
T
ALIESIN

A
ll afternoon the noise was incredible.

As Rob sat on the wheelbarrow, he saw how Clare prowled inside the metal fence, never coming out, as if she guarded the henge herself.

Her scream of rage when the tribe had burst through the perimeter fence still haunted him. But there was no battle.

It was a standoff.

For hours the tribe had held the field. They lounged in patient groups, occupied the trailer, gave balloons to the press and the three bemused policemen who talked to them gravely. To remove them would have meant force, and evidently that was going to be a last resort.

When the TV cameras came back—more than this morning, Rob saw—the whole thing developed into an interview frenzy, with heated arguments and backings-down and denials.

“Of course,” the man called Warrington repeated endlessly to a heckling reporter, “the henge is our first priority. Rumors of the use of a chain saw are totally exaggerated. At most a sliver would be removed....”

Howls of protest drowned him from the tribe. And they weren't alone. As Rosa had said, people were arriving all the time. There were cars and bikes backed up for miles down the lane. Local Women's Institute types turned up with garden chairs and sandwiches. Men who looked like archaeologists and birdwatchers and stalwarts of local history societies were everywhere. Somewhere a radio was playing “The Ride of the Valkyries.” Someone said a coven from Swindon was on the way.

“Protest!” Dan muttered. “It's more like a garden fête.”

Rob nodded absently. Clare was beckoning him.

He went over, stepping between a line of sprawled Hell's Angels lying across the trampled grass.

“You brought them here, didn't you?” she said quietly.

He licked dry lips. The quietness of her anger was scary. But he was angry too.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He couldn't bring himself to explain about Chloe. So he said, “It isn't right, to take a chain saw to it.”

She nodded, controlled, her cold blue eyes surveying the chaos her site had become. “So we leave it, do we? We live in ignorance. We never know how old it is or who built it or why. We let it rot in the wind and the rain.”

“It's survived this long. You brought it into the open.”

“Do you think I shouldn't have?”

He couldn't say he did. He couldn't say anything.

Suddenly she stabbed a furious finger at the crowd. “Look at them! Living in dreams, in crazy dreams of druids and UFOs and ley lines. Imagining magic in stones, inventing hopeless lunatic theories of star sitings and earth goddesses. These are the people who condemn scientific progress and go home and switch on their computers and e-mail other nutcases just like them. They hate animal experiments, but give them cancer and they'd be screaming for a cure like the rest of us. Hypocrites, all of them! Knowledge is all that keeps us human, and knowledge costs. That's why we walked out of Eden.”

“But the Garden of Eden is a myth.” Vetch was leaning behind her, one arm on the metal fence. “And we were expelled.”

She turned instantly, drawing breath. For a long moment they looked at each other. Then she said, “I
knew
you were behind this.”

He smiled sadly. “You've changed, Clare.”

“But you're the same.” She shook her head. “Still thinking you're immortal.”

Vetch looked unhappy. “Don't blame Rob,” he said. “There are things at stake here for him you don't know about. And speaking of knowledge, yes, you're right, it costs. It cost us Eden and will cost you the henge, but not the knowledge you mean, of facts and dates. These people you despise want a different knowledge, one that comes from the heart. You remember it. It speaks in myths and stories and dreams. It makes us human.”

She snorted. “If the henge isn't removed it will rot here. That's a fact.”

“Then it must rot.” Vetch looked over at some men in suits climbing the gate. “Death is a part of life. It comes to everything.”

“Even you?”

He nodded gravely. “Even me. Fear makes you want to preserve the henge. Fear of losing it. Of seeing it weather down, season by season. Seeing the lichen and the beetles eat it away. But take it out and what have you got? A pile of wood in a tank in some museum. It's unnatural to preserve life at any cost.”

“Life!” She laughed. “You talk as if it was alive.”

“It is. It's just been sleeping.”

They looked at each other. Then she said quietly, “You have changed, Vetch. You look ill.”

He laughed, linking his hands so that the three harsh burns were visible. “I'm dying, Goddess,” he said simply.

Dark movement slithered around the henge timbers. Rob turned, gasped.

Clare opened her mouth to screech, until Vetch clamped a hand over it.

The snake was long and green. It flowed out from the timbers of the henge, over the forked entrance, tongue flickering, heading straight for the gap in the metal fence. Rob said, “Is it from—”