Darkhenge

The oven was lit; already the smell was making him realize how late it was. He set the table.

  “Good day?” his father asked.

  Rob hardly knew what to say. “So-so. Got some good studies at Avebury. Then it rained.”

  “Dan?”

  “Mad. Thinks he’s a seventies rock god.”

  His father laughed, checking the oven.

  “What about you?” Rob muttered.

  “Oh, some tiresome technical hitches with the stage. There’s a touring opera production of Tosca due to open tomorrow and their battlements are too big for us.” He wrapped the tea towel around his hands and juggled the hot plates to the table. “Get stuck in.”

  As they ate, Chloe’s unspoken name lay between them, like the flowers in the vase on the table. It lodged in Rob’s throat like an unchewed morsel. They lapsed into silence, and then dumped the dishes in the sink. While his father put the news on, Rob went upstairs. The door of Chloe’s room was ajar.

  He stared at it.

  It was always kept closed.

  Perhaps Maria had been cleaning in there, though she wasn’t supposed to. It wasn’t to be touched. His mother insisted.

  Rob pushed the door, very gently, and it opened, making that familiar little creak on the bottom hinge. He went in.

  It smelled of her. That sickly scent she always used to splash on, which he used to complain about, make out it choked him. The row of cuddly toys sat on the pillow, and posters of boy bands, already going out of fashion, were neatly aligned on the walls. Her clothes were in the wardrobe, but he didn’t look in there. There were limits on how far his control could go, and he knew it, and never crossed them. Her school bag hung on the back of the door. There were books in there with her sums and essays in them. Her useless drawings.

  It was far too neat for a thirteen-year-old girl. Before the accident the room had convulsed, clothes had come and gone in heaps on the chair, a pile that grew and shrank each week, each day; papers and diaries had opened and closed, books had had bookmarks travel through them; glitzy makeup and bath stuff in fancy bottles had been new, then spilled, half empty, gummy, thrown away; CDs had blared and strummed.

  Now it was still.

  As if a Pause button had been pressed, and the room held in flickering stasis, without sound or movement to disturb the faint dust on the sill. As if the room had become a chamber in that castle in the story Chloe had always liked when she was small, where the princess slept for a hundred years behind the briars and the tangled trees, just as she was sleeping now, while everyone else carried on, and got older.

  He heard a car pull up, and went to the window, careful not to be seen. It was his mother, and there was someone with her—Father Mac, probably. Rob stepped back, and turned. Then he saw the photo of the horse. It was stuck on the side of the wardrobe, askew. A white horse, just like Callie. Like the horse at Falkner’s Circle.

  All at once, hearing the door open below and the voices, the memory of what he had seen that afternoon swept over him with its terrible, first jagged shock. He had seen his sister riding. It had been Chloe.

  He sat on the bed, as if his legs had weakened.

  How could it have been?

  Something hard was under the covers. He put his hand under the sheets and tugged it out. It was a journal, purple with stars on the front.

  CHLOE’S DIARY it said on the front in felt pen. KEEP OUT. OR ELSE.

  Elastic bands kept it shut.

  For a long time he looked at it, the childish letters, the silly stars. Then he slid the bands off and let the book fall open on a page.

  It’s happened again. I drew a picture of Callie and he made fun of it. He snatched it off me and ran downstairs with it. Dan was there, and I could have DIED. I could hear them giggling about it. I hate him.

  Rob hardly breathed. It hurt to breathe.

  He remembered the stupid drawing, all out of proportion, and yes, he had snatched it and she’d been furious but … it had been a joke.

  She always took things too seriously.

  He snapped the book shut and shoved it back. Then he got up and went downstairs.

  His father was watching Newsnight and talking to Father Mac; his mother was in the kitchen making a cup of tea. She brought it in and glanced at him quickly. “Hullo, sweetheart. I hear Maria is speaking to us all again.”

  Rob nodded. His mother looked tired, but as glamorous as ever. Her makeup was perfect, her pale blue cashmere top casual and expensive. He didn’t know how she kept up the pretense. He said, “How’s Chloe?”

  Her eyes widened. Father Mac’s hand made the briefest of pauses in its stretch for the tea. John Drew stared intently at the screen.

  “The same.” His mother kept her voice steady. “Her eyes flickered. Just after seven. They said it was a muscular spasm. Otherwise, the same.”

  They were silent; he nodded. Chloe was always the same. She had been the same—unmoving, her head lolling, fed intravenously—for three months and eight days. She would always be the same, which was why he couldn’t ask anymore.

  He turned away. “I might be getting a job.”

  The stillness shattered; they all moved at once. Father Mac took the cup, his father got up and went out, his mother flicked the television channels.

  “A job?” the priest growled. “Who’s that desperate?”

  “As an archaeological artist.”

  “Sounds impressive. What do they pay?”

  “No idea.” He sat down. “Actually, I don’t know anything about it, but it might be interesting.”

  Father Mac nodded, drinking. “Something a bit different for the portfolio.”

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  They were doing what they always did. Making a conversation up, acting it out before his parents. Reassuringly normal. His mother was the actress, but now she sat there tired and subdued, like an audience at a boring play. Their whole life was a play, a pretense at normality, he thought, getting up to see Father Mac out.

  “You get straight to bed, Katie Mcguire.” The priest took the remote control in his big hands and turned the television firmly off. “Tomorrow’s another day.”

  She looked up at him, her eyes red rimmed. “How many more days? How many, Mac?”

  Gently, he shook his head. “Trust the Lord, Kate. Trust him. We’ll get her back.” He paused a moment, his gray-stubbled face hard, his eyes steady. Then he called, “God bless, John!”

  Out on the porch, Rob breathed in the night air. The darkness of the garden was soft with smells: wet grass, lavender, honeysuckle. Bats flitted, tiny dark flutters around the roof. His godfather came and stood next to him, a big clumsy shape that took out a cigarette and lit it. The lighter made a sputter of sound, a cobalt blue flame. It threw shadows on the priest’s face, moving hollows, darknesses. It would be good to draw him like that, Rob thought, to get all the edginess and danger that was in him.

  The lighter went out; Father Mac started to walk down the drive. “So. Is this job at Avebury?”

  “Not really. There’s some sort of new dig toward East Kennet. I might not go—it’s just an idea.”

  “You go.” Mac turned at once. “If they think you’ve got something to fill your days, that’ll help them. Remember our deal, Robbie. Problems to me, normal face to them. Untroubled. Supportive. Your mother’s acting the biggest part of her life right now. Woman deserves an Oscar.” He smoked rapidly, his weight crunching the gravel on the winding drive. Behind him the trees were dark against the sky. Just before the road he turned. “That reminds me. What’s wrong?”

  Rob grimaced. “Apart from the obvious, you mean?”

  “Apart from that.”

  “Nothing.”

  “You look a bit … askew.”

  “What?”

  Mac snorted. “Knocked sideways.”

  Rob smiled, alarmed. The big man was so sharp. It was as if he felt what you were thinking, picked up some sort of invisible vibe. For an instant Rob was ready to bl
urt it all out, about the girl on the horse who had been Chloe riding Callie, the horse that was dead now, that had been killed in the accident. For a second he was desperate to be reassured, to be told it couldn’t have happened, that it wasn’t real. But Mac wouldn’t say that. Mac would smoke and consider and say something deep that would keep him awake all night, wondering. So instead he opened the gate and laughed. “Think I’ve joined a New Age tribe.”

  Mac groaned.

  “People of the Cauldron, they call themselves. Waiting for a master to come down and lead them.”

  “He’s already been. Hasn’t anyone told them?” Mac ground the cigarette butt out and tapped Rob on the shoulder. “Don’t you get mixed up with that guff. Well-meaning but totally confused, most pagans.”

  Going through the gate he took a few steps and turned. “Did he turn up?”

  “Who?”

  “This guru.”

  Rob shrugged. “Yes. His name’s Vetch.”

  Father Mac looked at him a moment in disbelief. “Vetch. Very green.”

  “What?”

  “It’s the name of a plant. Better than Nettle, I suppose.” He snorted. “Or Hemlock.”

  Watching the heavy figure wave and walk off up the village lane, Rob thought of the red-haired girl’s wide, astounded eyes. Whatever Darkhenge meant, Vetch had spoken the word they had been longing for. They had crowded around the stranger, talking, questioning, demanding explanations, but he had said little else, smiling wanly and standing there swaying slightly, exhausted, as if at the end of some long journey. And all the time, even when the tribe escorted him toward their dilapidated tents and vans, he had looked beyond them at Rob. A secret look. As if they shared something.

  Glancing down at his hand, Rob flexed the fingers, feeling again the man’s wet, slippery grip. In the darkness he let himself think it.

  The man had changed shape. Swallow, hare, fish. And so had the woman hunting him.

  Wind stirred the trees, dripping spatters of rain, so he turned, and saw the lights were on in his mother’s bedroom. Against the rise of the downs the house was big and dark, holding all its sorrow tight, reclusive in its vast garden, and beyond it the sky faded from palest lemon to cobalt blue in a watercolor wash without boundaries.

  The bedroom light went out.

  Rob hurried back. On the way he passed Chloe’s old swing.

  The wind rocked it, gently, back and forth.

  S. SAILLE: WILLOW

  This window has a crack. There’s a draft, very faint, coming from outside. Maybe if I can break the glass I can get some sort of message out.

  The bird is in a cage. Like me. I hate that.

  I won’t eat anything.

  All I can see is forest. The castle is in the middle. He calls it a caer.

  I wonder if Mum and Dad and Mac are devastated without me.

  I wonder if Rob’s sorry now.

  Anger grows in the deep places.

  Deep, under the earth.

  THE BOOK OF TALIESIN

  There was always a dig going on somewhere around Avebury. Every summer people came, usually students on some university course on the Neolithic or Bronze Age, cutting trenches out on the Beckhampton Avenue to find if it was really there, or investigating anomalies from aerial photos.

  Silbury Hill was the strangest place in a landscape of strangeness. Rob could understand avenues of stone, and circles of them even; he could imagine processions, and dancing and, as Dan reckoned, bloodthirsty sacrifices, but with all the hills around why build an artificial one? Huge and conical, shaggy with grass, the vast mound dominated the downs. Even from here on the Ridgeway he could see it, peeping over the top of Waden, a platform in the sky. It could be a tomb, but no one was buried in it. It could be a place to observe the stars. He had no doubt that the Cauldron people would tell him it was the womb of the earth goddess. Getting back on the bike, he cycled over ruts, the bag on his back jolting. There were things you could never find out about the past. Digging up bits of antler could only tell you so much. The stories to explain them were all gone. Like what had made Callie rear up that day. What had flung Chloe off her back. As he came to the A4, he stopped, waiting for a gap in the traffic. They must have had artists, those Stone Age people. Decorating pots, making statuettes. Maybe a great artist designed Silbury. Maybe it had no purpose, but just was. Did art need a purpose?

  He cycled across the road. Beyond it the Ridgeway dropped; it passed a line of burial mounds and then crossed the Kennet on a tiny, rickety bridge, leading him to the back lane of West Overton. He cycled faster now, on the tarmac.

  It took ten minutes to find the dig. Here in the valley there were none of the wide, open views of the downland; hedges and houses and church towers gathered together, modern bungalows and cottages with satellite dishes turning their backs uneasily on the prehistoric, windy uplands.

  Down a muddy lane with grass growing in its center he found a parked car, a few bicycles in the hedge. There was a gate, and he stopped the bike and looked through the bars.

  At once a bearded man came out of a Portakabin. “Can I help?” It sounded more like a threat, Rob thought. He got off the bike.

  “I heard you needed an artist. To draw finds and things.” It sounded lame. He had no idea what the right name for the job was.

  But the archaeologist just said, “Who sent you?”

  “A girl. She said to ask for Dr. Kavanagh.” He was glad he’d remembered the name.

  The man turned. “Leave the bike.”

  Rob climbed the gate. The field was muddy, oddly so for chalk country, and as they walked he saw it led down into a hollow. At the bottom was the dig, but to his surprise a high metal fence had been erected all around it, so nothing could be seen.

  “Wait here.” The bearded man went inside, through a gate.

  Rob glanced around.

  It was eerily quiet. No rows of students troweling, no one taking photographs. A bird was chirping in the hedge, and beyond that somewhere a car droned down a distant lane. Wind rippled the edges of a plastic sheet. The rest of the field was deserted.

  A woman came out from the metal fence. She was wearing blue overalls and a T-shirt, and had blond hair, tied back. She looked at him with hostility. “What girl?”

  “I … don’t know her name. She was a student.”

  “She had no business sending you here.”

  Rob blinked. “I’ll go then. Sorry.”

  The woman frowned. “Let me see your work. I presume you’ve brought something.”

  He’d seen her before somewhere. It suddenly struck him that she might be Dr. Kavanagh, and the image he hadn’t realized he had, of a middle-aged man in tweeds, vanished. Awkward, he took out a sketchbook and handed it to her.

  She flipped through the pages. Rob tried to stand confidently. He hated people looking at his work, but he knew it was good. He was an accurate draftsman, he delighted in intricate drawings of anything that was complicated: machines, trees, buildings. At first the pages were ruffled quickly but he knew by the way she slowed, the way she gazed, that she was impressed. He lifted his chin a little.

  “Well, yes. But you’ve had no training. We need sections, reconstructions, plans. Careful measurements, accuracy.”

  “I could learn.” He licked his lips. “The girl said you were shorthanded.”

  Dr. Kavanagh closed the book and handed it back. She breathed deep, put her hands on her hips, and stared down at a muddy boot. Then she looked up at him, considering, and he saw her eyes were blue and clear.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Robert Drew.”

  “Local?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dependable? Not going off on holiday?”

  “No,” he muttered.

  She was silent. Then she said, “Look, Robert, this project is very important. It’s also likely to prove controversial, so we don’t want news of it getting out. If I trace any leaks in security back to you, you’re off the site. Unders
tand?”

  He shrugged. Had they found treasure? Gold?

  “We are short of people, though that’s as I want it. There’s not much money. Three pounds an hour, strictly cash. If anyone asks, you’re just a volunteer. I can’t be bothered with paperwork.”

  He could probably get more wiping tables, but then what he’d said to Dan was true. He had enough money. And somehow her reluctance made him more keen. “Okay.”

  She sighed, as if she still wasn’t sure. Then she turned. “Come on.”

  The metal fence was head high. Behind it, he found a network of bewilderment: trenches, ridges of sliced soil, pegs and strings, tags with numbers stuck in the earth. The bearded man crouched in the center, and another student lay flat, scraping painfully at things Rob couldn’t even distinguish from mud.

  It was very disappointing.

  “I’ll give you a quick run-through,” Dr. Kavanagh said briskly. “An aerial survey in the nineties showed up some peculiar crop marks in this field; a geo-phys study two years ago confirmed them. They showed a circular disturbance. Not so unusual in this landscape, but funds weren’t forthcoming at the time to excavate anyway.” She spoke rapidly, as if she were lecturing some group, her eyes darting over the site. He had a feeling she didn’t miss much. “When we started to dig, though, everything changed. This hollow is possibly the most exciting thing in British archaeology for years.” She pointed. “Notice anything about the soil?”

  Rob swung the backpack off and dumped it; then he crouched, looking. He knew nothing about any of this, but it wouldn’t hurt to seem keen. “It’s the wrong color,” he said.

  She raised an eyebrow. “Meaning?”

  “The soil around here is chalk. White, full of flints—I mean, I know this is near the river, but it’s brown. Chocolate. Sort of burnt umber.”

  For the first time she looked at him with a flicker of interest. Then she said, “Yes. Well, it’s actually a form of peat. A complete geological fluke, contained in an impermeable saucer of very hard rock, not at all like the chalk or local limestones. Not only that, but it’s saturated with water, probably from a series of hidden springs rising under it. The conditions are totally bizarre for this area. That’s what makes it so fascinating.”