Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [51]
The henge was already eight hundred years old and it was a place of mystic significance. Not only was it the site at which the priests made the ritual sacrifices to the sun god and the moon goddess: it had important astronomical properties central to the ordering of all activities in the huge territory of Sarum and its great chief Krona.
And though there were larger henges, like the huge complex to the north west known as Avebury, where a neighbouring chief reigned over a lesser people, Dluc always reminded his priests: “The proportions of our henge are better; and we are superior astronomers, too.”
For the henge was perfect: on Midsummer Day, the summer solstice, the sun rose over the horizon exactly opposite the entrance and sent its first crimson flash straight along the avenue, between the stones at the gateway and into the centre of the circle. At the winter solstice, the sun set in exactly the opposite direction, so that its last rays sent their parting glow over the bluestones and along the great ceremonial way. At the henge, using wooden markers as the sun progressed round the heavens, the priests kept tally of the days and ordered the calendar; they calculated the dates of the solstice and the equinox, they regulated the times for sowing and for harvesting and all the other observances listed in the sacred sayings of the priests. The henge was their gigantic sundial that told the days of the year.
Over the henge, Dluc knew, and over all Sarum, the sun god presided. His brooding presence lay over the high ground and over the valleys. In the morning and in the evening when his powerful rays struck the bare ridges round the place where the five rivers met, and threw huge shadows across the bowl of land, every man knew that the sun was watching him. At midday, his awful light blasted the dry chalk so that it hurt the eyes to look at it. Sun gave day and night, summer and winter, spring and harvest: the sun gave – and the sun took away: the sun was absolute.
As the priests scurried about, Dluc moved slowly from one of the pointed sticks to another, unrolling his ball of twine and pausing occasionally to check a sighting line. At such times, in the quiet of the temple, his intellectual, ascetic nature could break free from the troubles that beset the land. With only the deferential priests and the silent bluestones for company, Dluc made his abstruse measurements and calculations in his lonely effort to solve the greatest of all the mysteries of the heavens.
The interruption came in the form of two swift-footed runners, who carried between them an empty litter. They moved across the sacred ground with remarkable speed, their bare, hardened feet making a hiss as they left their prints in the dew.
When they arrived at the henge, they came quickly to the entrance of the sanctum where they prostrated themselves. One of the young priests pointed them out to the High Priest. Dluc frowned.
“What is the meaning of this interruption?”
“It is Krona, High Priest,” they answered without looking up – for it was an offence for a servant to look at the High Priest. “He sends for you.”
“Before dawn?” He glared at them. Then a thought struck him. “Is he sick?”
The two men hesitated.
“We do not know,” the older of them said, “but he is very angry,” he added, and his companion nodded emphatically.
Dluc suppressed a sigh.
“I will come.”
Indicating to the priest that they were to sacrifice