Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [50]
But around 2,000 B.C. something very strange occurred. For some reason, the building with the bluestones which was half completed, suddenly stopped. The bluestones were removed from the site. And then, miraculously a new building was begun. It had a stately avenue that led from the entrance between earthwork walls for six hundred yards across the rolling high ground. Its gigantic grey stones dwarfed the previous bluestones. Its design and its magnificence was unlike anything that the island had ever seen before.
THE HENGE
2,000 B.C.
There were still a few hours before the dawn.
In the centre of the great temple of Stonehenge, the six priests waited expectantly for their orders: it was some time since the High Priest had last spoken.
To an observer who did not understand the secret workings of the henge, the scene would have seemed strange indeed. The priests who stood respectfully at their posts were each dressed in a simple long robe woven from undyed lambs’ wool, their feet encased in sturdy leather boots to protect against the cold, and their heads, except for a V-shaped wedge of hair with its point between the eyes, shaved bare. In their hands each priest held two or three long sticks with pointed tips.
Apart from the priests, there was only one other person in the henge: in the gateway, bound with strong leather ropes and long ago terrified into silence, lay a young criminal who was to be sacrificed to the sun god at dawn.
Dluc, the High Priest, did not seem to be aware of any of them. His tall, rangy figure in its long grey robes stood as motionless as a stone. In his right hand he held his ceremonial staff the top of which, carved in bronze and decorated with gold, was in the elegant shape of a swan – the symbol of the sun god. In his left hand was a large ball of twine made of flax. His gaunt, clean-shaven face was impassive: his eyes were fixed on a distant point on the horizon.
He had good reason to be preoccupied. For some time now it had been clear that – unless the gods could be pacified – the ancient territory of Sarum and its sacred grounds were doomed to destruction. But what could he do to avert it? And how much time did he have?
“If Krona should fall sick . . .” he murmured to himself. It was a terrible thought, which he tried to dismiss from his mind – but it would not go away.
Imperceptibly his fingers tightened round his staff.
But there were other duties to perform and much work to be done that night. Breaking his painful reverie, he suddenly pointed the staff at four different spots in the circle and gave a curt order:
“Place the markers.”
The priests hurried to the places he had indicated and at each one, drove a stick into the ground. This night, as every night, the astronomer priests of Stonehenge were busy measuring the heavens.
There was a half moon high in the cold autumn sky. It was a night full of stars. The dew on the bare ridges, which swept majestically away on every side, caused them to shimmer in the moonlight.
On every ridge of the sacred region, chalk barrows jutted out of the turf – some long, others round – pale forms which glimmered, even from miles away, like ghostly ships, frozen upon a vast unmoving sea. For the dead watched over the living at Sarum, and were honoured accordingly.
The sacred grounds extended for many miles across this rolling landscape; they contained not only burial mounds, but also small temples of wood and earthwork enclosures – the monuments of centuries during which this high ground had been reserved as an area apart. No place on the island was more hallowed, and pilgrims would come down the chalk ridgeways many days’ journey to visit the sacred plateau.
At the centre of these precincts, on a gently rolling slope, stood the magic henge.
It was huge: a circular chalk bank, three hundred and twenty feet across and surrounded by a deep ditch, enclosed the inner sanctum. This was unusual: for normally the ditch of the island henges lay inside their banks, not outside.