Darkhenge (9 page)

As they drove he was silent. She gave him one look, then concentrated on the dark lanes, the sharp bends. He wanted to talk to her, but some stubbornness kept him morose. Instead he watched the black humps and hollows of the prehistoric landscape, the immensity of the stones as the car purred past them through the sleeping village.

They parked away from the site, then walked quietly. Two fields on, a fox ran across in front of them. Rosa smiled. “That might be Vetch.”

Rob said, “You don't really believe he can shape-shift.”

She shrugged. “I have no idea what he can do. To be born from the Cauldron means to have knowledge of the stars and trees and beasts, and to be a bard means entering into the lives of those beings.”

“New Age twaddle,” he said, wishing Dan was there.

She laughed. “Listen, Rob. The first night he came, he told us a story. His story. About a boy who was once asked to stir a magic Cauldron, full of power, full of inspiration. He stirred it for a year and a day and at the end of that time three hot splashes came out of the Cauldron and burned his hand. He put his hand to his mouth and he tasted them. In that instant he became a poet, the greatest of poets. Taliesin himself. But the woman who owned the Cauldron is the Muse, the Goddess. She hated him for stealing her magic. She hunted him through field and sky and river, each of them changing shape. She still hunts him. She'll kill him if she catches him.”

They all spoke this mystical mixed-up language. But the woman had been real. He had no idea what to make of any of it.

“I suppose she's called Clare,” he said acidly.

Rosa looked at him in surprise. “In the story she's called Ceridwen.”

Rob shook his head. He didn't answer.

Vetch was waiting in the field corner, where the hedges rose up, dark and rustling.

“They'll hear us,” Rob said simply.

“They'll neither hear nor see us,” Vetch said, “because I'll close their eyes and ears. We'll just be shadows.”

“Sure. And the dog?”

“Animals like me. Don't worry, Rob.” He held out his hand. After a second, Rob took the key out and dropped it in the man's palm. Vetch smiled.

They climbed the field gate cautiously, its wooden bars slippery with dew, ridged and powdery under Rob's tight grip. On the left, in the darkness of the overgrown hedge, the trailer was a pale glimmer, its windows black squares.

Vetch looked at it. “Two men. Asleep.”

“So you've already checked them out.”

“If you say so.”

Rosa said, “What about the dog?”

“Out here somewhere. Close.”

In the darkness, quite unexpectedly, rain began to fall, a soft rain that pattered in the leaves. Vetch ignored it. He walked across the field, sidestepping hollows and mounds of spoil, upturned wheelbarrows, areas cordoned off with fluttering tape and tiny flags. Before him the metal fence loomed up in the dark. The others followed, Rosa close, Rob trailing behind, irritable with guilt.

Vetch reached the fence and took out the key. He slipped it into the lock, but before he could turn it Rosa hissed, “Master!”

A low growl.

The Alsatian had risen up from the grass, lips drawn back, teeth bared, and slavering. The growl was a terrifying threat in its throat, a threat that in seconds would leap and bark and tear and bite.

Rob moved, but Vetch put a hand out to stop him. Then the dark-haired man crouched. He and the dog faced each other.

“Come to me,” Vetch commanded.

His voice was quiet, grave. To Rob's surprise the dog's growl ended instantly. It stood, trotted forward, licked Vetch's hand and lay down.

Vetch gave Rob a glance and turned back to the fence.

“Knowledge of beasts,” Rosa whispered. “See?”

“Lots of people can do that.” But it amazed him, the animal's complete trust. Max was fierce with anyone; even with Jimmy around, Rob had never gone very near him.

The gate opened; Vetch slid in, the others behind him like shadows. Once inside, Rosa clicked on a flashlight.

Droplets of spray hissed through the light like a golden curtain.

Rob watched the two of them as they looked down at the henge. Rosa stared at the ring of timbers, dark and ominous, rising out of the ridged soil.

She let out a breath of awe. “It's
amazing.
What is it?”

“Clare says an enclosure.” Rob was watching Vetch. “A ritual site.”

The poet had not moved. He was very still, the light catching his eyes, the glittering spray pattering around him. He stood with his arms around himself, a dark figure against the darkness, and there was a tension about him that made them both fall silent. Now, without speaking, he made his way around the timber ring to the entrance, the narrow gap that Marcus had spent all day troweling. Climbing through, he went to the center of the henge, knelt and, to their astonishment, turned his head and crouched so low that his ear was pressed to the ground. His hands spread on the surface, feeling it gently, as if it was softest fleece. “Have they found anything here?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“They will.” He raised his head. “I hear the voices of the trees, calling me back. The Trees of the Summer Country, of the Region of the Summer Stars. I hear the birch and the oak, the elm. The forests of the Unworld.” He gazed down, propped on his hands, as if the peaty soil was the opening of a well, a transparent glass floor he could stare through. For a moment he seemed lost in that vision. Then, a little stiffly, he climbed to his feet, brushing soil from his fingers. “The way down will be here.”

“Down?”

Vetch turned his head. In the darkness, rain glinted, caught in the hooded glow of the flashlight. Vast shadows flashed and slid over the dark timbers. Concerned, they saw he looked worn and tired. He caught hold of the henge with one hand to support himself, and the fine mist of the sprays that kept it wet fell on him in the torchlight like a million minute stars.

“I told you,” he breathed. “The way to Chloe.”

Suddenly Rob's patience snapped. Not caring if anyone heard, he yelled, “I should never have brought you here! Get out!”

Rosa said, “Rob—”

“Look at him! Using me! Getting at me through Chloe. It's sick—
I'm
sick for sticking around with you.” He was shaking; he clenched his hands.

Vetch straightened and came up to him. “We can help Chloe.”

“You can't. No one can.”

“You and I can. There is a way to find her.”

“Shut up.
Shut up!
” He turned, groping for the gate, blind.

Vetch moved gently around, into his way. “You want her to die, is that it?”

Rob's head whipped up.
“What!”

“You want her to die. That would end it tidily. It would be over.”

“You pathetic—”

“Your parents would mourn, but even for them it would be a secret relief. They would be free to remember Chloe as she was. After a while, all their attention, all their love, would come back to you. It would be just you, and them.”

Rob's fist swung in a blow of fury, but before it slammed home Vetch had gripped his wrist. His grasp was surprisingly strong. He said, “It's hard to hear it said aloud. But there is a place inside you that feels these things.”

“No.”

“It's there, Rob. Dark as coal, a ring around your heart, like this henge. But maybe inside that, deeper and darker, is something else, and it would emerge if you let it, if you scraped at it and dug away at it, let all the creatures of your imagination come out of it, birds and beasts from depths you have no knowledge of. That's where Chloe is, Rob.”

Water spray hissed in the silence. Bats flitted over the trees. By the gate Max made a small snuffle as he laid his chin on his paws. Rosa stood watching, her eyes wide and scared.

Slowly, Rob pulled his arm away.

He felt shaken, exhausted. As if some barrier had been scrambled over, some resistance broken down in him. “All right.” He looked up. “Find her then. Show me what to do. I'll do whatever you say.”

Vetch said, “What we do is wait until the henge is fully exposed. In the meantime, you take me to see her.”

Rob stared. “In the nursing home?”

“We can go secretly. Your parents needn't know.”

Rob shook his head. He felt bewildered. The bats dizzied him, swooping after invisible insects. “The nurses will tell them.”

Vetch smiled his rueful smile. “Say I'm a friend.”

“Can you…?” He hated to ask it, loathed himself, had to get it out. “Do you mean you can wake her?”

“I don't know. It depends how many caers she's entered, how far in she is. I will certainly try.” He jerked his head at Rosa, and the girl clicked the flashlight off quietly.

And Rob stared, because there was light in the henge, and it was seeping from the ground, the faintest phosphorescence, like trapped starlight. And the bats were pouring from a cavern where the soil had collapsed, tens and hundreds of bats, a whirling cloud of darkness that flapped and twisted and split above the treetops into blurs and zigzags. Their high squeaks punctured the night.

Vetch stood in the curtain of spray, and looked up at them. “Let them fly, Rob,” he said.

In the attic room, he dragged furniture across the door. The window shutters creaked, despite the bar across them. Branches slithered. The stairwell must already have been choked.

“They're coming!” I screamed. A tendril of ivy slid under the door; he stamped on it, tore it up. Another came, and another.

I backed against the window. Putting my hands behind me, I fumbled for the shutter catch. If I could open it I could scream for help. To Mum and Dad. To Mac, because surely Mac would hear.

Before I'd found the catch, the ivy was around his wrists and ankles; he yelled, kicking and twisting.

Gently, I unlatched the shutter.

It burst wide.

Chief bard am I among the bards of Elphin,
My country the region of the summer stars.

T
HE
B
OOK OF
T
ALIESIN

O
n 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.