Death of Kings_ A Novel - Bernard Cornwell [94]
Weird stones are strange circles of great boulders placed by the old people, presumably in honour of their gods. Usually, when we find such a place, we dig at the base of the stones and I have found treasure at one or two. The buried stones are in mounds, some of which are round heaps and some like long ridges, and both are the old people’s graves. We dig into them too, though some folk believe the skeletons inside are protected by spirits or even by dragons with fiery breath, but I once uncovered a jar filled with jet, amber and golden ornaments inside just such a grave. The mound we discovered that day was on a high ridge with views stretching all around. Looking north we could see into the far-off Danish land, though that was a long way off, too far-off, but nevertheless I thought this ancient tomb would suit us.
The place was called Natangrafum and it belonged to a Mercian thegn named Ælwold, who was happy that I should dig into his mound. ‘I’ll lend you slaves to do the work,’ he told me, ‘bastards don’t have enough to do until the harvest.’
‘I’ll use my own,’ I said.
Ælwold was immediately suspicious, but I was Uhtred and he did not want to antagonise me. ‘You’ll share anything you find?’ he asked anxiously.
‘I will,’ I said, then put gold on his table. ‘That gold,’ I said, ‘is for your silence. No one knows I’m here and you tell no one. If I find you break that silence I’ll come back and I’ll bury you in that mound.’
‘I’ll say nothing, lord,’ he promised. He was older than I, with pendulous jowls and long grey hair. ‘God knows I don’t want trouble,’ he went on, ‘last year’s harvest was bad, the Danes aren’t that far away, and I just pray for a quiet life.’ He took the gold. ‘But you’ll find nothing in that mound, lord. My father dug it out years ago and there’s nothing there but skeletons. Not even a bead.’
There were two graves on the ridge top, one built upon the other. A circular mound lay in the centre and athwart it and beneath it, running east and west, was a long mound some ten feet high and over sixty paces long. Much of that long mound was just that, a mound of earth and chalk, but at its eastern end were man-made caves that were entered through a boulder-clad doorway that faced towards the rising sun.
I sent Ludda to fetch a dozen slaves from Fagranforda and they moved the boulder, and cleared the entrance of earth so that we were able to stoop into the long, stone-lined passageway. Four chambers, two on either side, opened from that tunnel. We lit the tomb with pitch-soaked torches and pulled down the heavy rocks that blocked the chamber entrances and found, as Ælwold had said, nothing but skeletons.
‘Will it do?’ I asked Ludda.
He did not answer at first. He was staring at the skeletons and there was fear on his face. ‘They’ll come back to haunt us, lord,’ he said softly.
‘No,’ I said, yet felt a cold shiver in my blood. ‘No,’ I said again, though I did not believe it.
‘Don’t touch them, lord,’ he pleaded.
‘Ælwold said his father disturbed them,’ I said, trying to convince myself, ‘so we should be safe.’
‘He disturbed them, lord, and that means he woke them. Now they’re waiting to take revenge.’ The skeletons lay in untidy heaps, adults and children together. Their skulls grinned at us. One bony head had a great gash in its left side and there were vestiges of hair on another. A child lay curled in a skeleton’s lap. Another corpse reached a bony arm towards us, its finger bones spread on the stony floor. ‘Their spirits are here,’ Ludda whispered, ‘I can feel them, lord.’
I felt the cold shiver again. ‘Ride back to Fagranforda,’ I told Ludda, ‘and bring Father Cuthbert and my best hound.’
‘Your best hound?’
‘Lightning, bring him. I’ll expect you tomorrow.’
We crept back out of the passage and the slaves put back the great boulder that sealed the dead from the living, and that night the sky was lit with great curtains of pale blue and glowing white that shivered high to hide the stars. I have seen those lights before, usually in the depths