Triskellion (7 page)

“You mean there are more like this? And older?” Adam was sounding keener by the minute. The idea that the last person to have touched this coin had earned it two hundred years before made his head spin.

“Much older. You want to see some?” The man’s face split into a fearsome grin and he nodded at Adam. Adam nodded back.

The man thrust out a grubby hand. “Jacob Honeyman.
Beekeeper. How do you do?”

Adam shook the man’s hand. “I’m Adam. We’re staying up at Root Cottage with our grand—”

“Roots?” Honeyman barked. “You’re
Roots
?”

“We’re Newmans, actually,” Rachel said. “Root is our mother’s maiden name.”

Honeyman slowly looked from Rachel to Adam, and then grinned, treating them to a fine view of his gums and irregular teeth. “Once a Root, always a Root,” he said. The grin vanished from his face as quickly as it had appeared, then he turned abruptly and began marching away.

“Come on then, off we go…”

Before Rachel could make excuses about returning for lunch, her brother was off, following closely behind Jacob Honeyman, whose black coat flapped behind him as he marched away across the moor.

“There’s a few really old ones in here,” Honeyman said, placing a couple of flat wooden trays on the battered wooden table.

They had followed the strange man back across the moor to his house. At least, “house” was what he called it. To Rachel and Adam it looked more like a corrugated tin hut with tacked-on additions and windows that had belonged originally to several other buildings.

Honeyman lifted the cover, revealing that the trays were divided into small compartments, each containing a coin and
a tiny label, handwritten in a microscopic, spidery script.

“Can I?” Adam reached out to the box and Honeyman nodded his permission. Adam picked up a small, irregular nugget of brown metal, which, on close inspection, was stamped with a dog-like animal on one side, and a star on the other.

“An Ecgbehrt penny. About AD 802, 810, something like that.” Honeyman gave a self-satisfied smile, delighted at being able to air his knowledge. Adam picked up another. This one was larger and stamped with a monster or dragon. “Burgred,” Honeyman said with certainty, naming another Saxon king. “Somewhere around about 852.”

Rachel picked another coin out from the tray. It was silvery and more sophisticated than the Saxon ones they had been looking at. Honeyman took it from her.

“Roman,” he said. “Probably one of the first struck in Britain. This one’s a few years BC.” He held the coin up between his thumb and forefinger, raised it to the light. The head of a Roman emperor was clearly visible, garlanded with laurel leaves. Honeyman turned the coin in his fingers. On the other side was a familiar shape.

“It’s the Tri-… whatever-you-call-it,” Adam said.

Honeyman nodded. “Triskellion,” he said. “That’s right.”

Rachel and Adam stared, astonished: people had been reproducing this image for over two thousand years.

“Surely these things belong in a museum?” Rachel said. She couldn’t believe that Jacob Honeyman possessed such a personal treasure trove.

“Thing is, what you lot don’t understand, this whole country is many thousands of years old. People have dropped coins everywhere, museums are full of ‘em. So many they can’t even catalogue the flippin’ things. They wouldn’t give these room space. The important thing about these coins is that they’re here. Buried by the circle.”

“So why is this Triskellion so important?”

Honeyman chuckled at Adam’s question. “Do you really want to know?”

Adam did.

With the help of diagrams and sheets photocopied from library books, Honeyman explained, as Granny Root had, that the origin of the shape was Celtic and that it was formed by three circles that intersected each other. He told them that the circles represented the trinity of female goddesses – the virgin, the mother and the old woman – worshipped by pagans, long before the time of Christianity or any other major religion. “And the circle that binds the three-bladed shape of the Triskellion,” Honeyman said, “represents the circle of life itself.”

By now, Rachel was as interested as Adam. Honeyman was prone to long, rambling explanations, and his anecdotes were often accompanied by an alarming twitch, prolonged periods of scratching or an explosive cough. But the ancient history, the romance of the circle and the fact that it was somehow female, fired her imagination. Honeyman estimated that the circle had been cut out maybe a thousand
years before Christ, which would make it late Bronze Age. He told them that small artefacts in gold and silver discovered near by supported this, and that people had probably been leaving “gifts” at the circle since it began.

“Why would they bury their best stuff, though?” Adam wanted to know.

“To placate the gods mostly … and to ensure a good harvest of crops. And I suppose it’s worked, ‘cos all the crops flourish round Triskellion. We never have a bad year. Mind you, some say it might have been a burial place … or that it might have been a spot for human sacrifices.” Jacob treated them to his grin once more, warming to his theme as he drew a yellow finger across his neck in a grisly way.

Rachel and Adam exchanged nervous glances. The beating of the Bacon brothers was all too fresh in their memory for them to be in the least bit fascinated by the idea of human sacrifice.

“I could tell you where to see some of the artefacts if you like,” Honeyman said. “But how about some lunch first?”

Adam was about to leap at the offer, but then Rachel noticed the large vat of brownish liquid that was bubbling on top of the sooty wood-burning stove, and the pair of rabbits that hung from a hook above the dirty sink.

“We’re not very hungry,” she said.

I
t smelled musty inside the church: damp and dark and rich.
Earthy
.

Adam pulled a face, as though recoiling from a carton of milk gone bad. “What did the bee man say was in here?” He tried his best to replicate Jacob Honeyman’s low croak. “‘Treasures beyond belief’?”

“Yeah, but you have to remember he’s crazy,” Rachel said.

“He’s nice, though.” Adam stepped further inside. “And funny…”

Adam’s first instinct about Honeyman had been right, Rachel thought. Despite a slightly off-putting appearance, the beekeeper had seemed trustworthy and unthreatening. There had been a warmth about him, and his hut, though messy and ramshackle, had felt welcoming and secure.

The previous afternoon, having had his offer of lunch turned down, Honeyman had taken the twins to the smallholding behind his house and shown them the rows of beehives he kept. He had put his hand deep into a hive and
brought it out covered with bees. The bees had buzzed and writhed round his wrist like a living gauntlet. He had lifted the hand to his stubbly face, where a column of bees had peeled off from the rest and crawled over his lips, nose and eyelids. Rachel and Adam had stared, their mouths gaping in astonishment, as the bees moved all over the strange man without stinging him. Honeyman had grinned, delighted at their astonishment. He was, he announced proudly, the fifteenth generation of apiarist, or beekeeper, on this very site.

Honeyman had sent them off with a jar of cloudy, brownish honey, a large chunk of honeycomb suspended in the golden liquid. He had also given Adam the coin he had dug up that morning.

“For good luck,” he’d said.

It was a hot and sticky Sunday afternoon and the cool inside the church was welcome. Bright sunshine streamed through the stained glass window at the far end of the small church and the twins had to shield their eyes from the dazzling beams of coloured light.

Rachel was not surprised to see the Triskellion symbol, picked out in rich red, blue and gold. Beneath the circular section of the window, Rachel could make out two figures: a knight in armour and a maiden, each one in a separate pane, a shooting star brightening the night sky behind them.

“Hey, Rach. Look at this…”

Rachel clambered between the rows of rickety wooden pews, and found Adam in a small chapel off to one side.

“This is co-ool,” Adam whispered.

Rachel looked over her brother’s shoulder. She felt a small chill run through her as she saw, in an alcove, the stone effigy of a knight. The figure lay flat, as though asleep, head resting on a carved pillow. It was sculpted from a cream-coloured stone, worn smooth in some places, chipped in others and obviously very old. The feet were long and narrow and on its head the figure wore a pointed helmet. The body was all but concealed by a long shield, on which was carved the Triskellion symbol.

“Guess it must be King Arthur, or Sir Lancelot or someone,” Adam hazarded.

Rachel was transfixed by the figure. She held her breath, her head throbbing as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing, of what she had already seen on the stained glass window. This was the same knight and the same maiden she had seen in her vision. But how could that be possible? She had never even heard of this church before, yet this morning she had been dreaming about exactly these two figures.

Jet lag? No, Rachel thought, not this time. This vision had been something else…

“May I help you?”

The sharp, precise tone made Rachel and Adam start. They had not heard the door open behind them. They turned to see a spindly man dressed in a long black cassock and dog collar, his alarmingly thin appearance perfectly matching his reedy voice.

“I see you’ve found our crusader…”

Adam stared, transfixed by the man’s large Adam’s apple, which bobbed up and down as he spoke.

“Crusader?” asked Rachel, genuinely interested. She recognized the vicar as the man who had sailed past them on his bike the day before. She looked down at the leaflet she’d picked up at the entrance:
The Church of St. Augustine, Triskellion. C. 1073. Vicar: The Rev. J. Stone, BA
.

“Yes,” said Reverend Stone. “We think this is the tomb of our very own crusader, most likely Sir Richard de Waverley.”

“Is it old? I mean, like …
how
old?” Even as he asked, Adam remembered that nothing in this village seemed younger than a few hundred years, including his grandmother.

“Around eight hundred years,” the vicar said.

“So is his, um, skeleton and stuff actually in there?”

Rachel was embarrassed by her brother’s need for graphic information. “Adam.”

Reverend Stone held up his hand. “It’s quite all right. I admire a questioning mind, and we’re all fascinated by the gory details. Sadly though, on this occasion, there are none. Sir Richard’s remains were probably buried where he fell, somewhere out in the Middle East.” He pointed down at the carving. “We call this our crusader tomb, but it’s really just a memorial, I’m afraid.”

Adam looked disappointed. “Mr Honeyman told us there were some artefacts to see?”

“Artefacts? Oh yes, there certainly are. Follow me.” The
reverend turned and hurried away, fumbling with a large bunch of keys; marching across the tiles and brasses worn smooth by centuries of worshippers.

Rachel and Adam watched as he opened the door to a small, whitewashed room at the side of the church. Faded maps on the wall outlined the parish boundary, and at the far end of the room were two glass-topped, mahogany display cases.

Reverend Stone ushered Rachel forward to look. In the first case were a variety of small relics.

“These are mostly Saxon. A couple of the rings are gold, but otherwise the pins and all the other bits and bobs are bronze.” Reverend Stone extended a twig-like finger, pointing to the second display case. “But
this
is our pièce de résistance. This is why everything is kept under lock and key.”

Rachel and Adam pressed their faces close to the glass. Laid out by itself on a piece of green felt was what looked, at first glance, like a curved, golden blade. Rachel stared at the crescent of metal. It was instantly familiar to her and yet not a shape she immediately recognized.

Reverend Stone grinned, thin-lipped and joyless. “Do you see what it is?”

Rachel looked at Adam. He didn’t know. She looked back at the blade and it suddenly dawned on her that it was a part of something else. That if three such blades were placed tip to tip, they would form a shape she was coming to know very well.

“It’s part of a Triskellion,” she whispered. Now she was full of questions herself. “What’s it made of?”

“Well, there’s some gold certainly, but also one or two other elements we’re not certain about.”

“Hasn’t a scientist tried to find out?”

“We wouldn’t really be too keen on that. They’d take it away and lock it in a vault somewhere and we’d lose a piece of our history.”

“Are there any other parts?”

Reverend Stone spread his arms wide. “Ah, well there’s the mystery. Nobody knows what happened to the other two blades.” He glanced at his watch. “Now I don’t mean to hurry you, but…” He guided them back into the body of the church and locked the door behind him.

Rachel looked up at the stained glass window that dominated the altar. Questions continued to flood her mind. “What about the figures in the window?”