Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [60]
“The observation took one hundred years,” the priest would continue, thus reminding the novitiates that this degree of precision and dedication would be expected from them too.
Nor was this all. For though the solar year does not divide neatly into twenty-nine-day lunar months, it was Dluc himself who had discovered, by patient calculation, that a coincidence between solar and lunar years could be arranged on a long count of nineteen years – a discovery always ascribed to Meton the Greek, some two millennia later.
“It is one of the greatest secrets in the sacred sayings of the priests,” the novices were told – “that the moon goddess only shows the same face, on the same day, once in nineteen years.”
And this was the significance of the augury. For Dluc and his priests, from their meticulous recordings, knew that soon a rare and notable event was due to take place in the heavens. At the end of the present nineteen-year moonswing, already nearly half completed, not only would the sun at midsummer solstice rise opposite the moon and exactly down the centre of the avenue, but on that precise day it would be full. It was a huge astronomical coincidence, an opposition more perfect than any seen for generations: and it was due to take place at the end of that very moonswing – in ten years’ time.
“How can such a huge work be accomplished in so short a time?” a young priest cried.
“By the will of the gods,” Dluc replied coldly.
For several days, Dluc pondered the new temple design. Into it he put all his knowledge of the mysteries of the gods, the intricate pattern of their motions in the heavens, the magic numbers the priests derived from the motions of the sun and moon and the succession of the days – all of this and more went into his design, until finally he was satisfied and murmured to himself: “Truly this will be a hymn to the gods, a marvel in stone.”
It was. The henge that Dluc designed was far taller than any temple on the island. The bluestones stood six to eight feet high, and were sacred. But the High Priest decided to replace them with the mighty sarsen stones that came from the downland nearly twenty miles away, and which would stand three times as high. At the centre, he would place five huge free-standing arches, each consisting of two uprights with a lintel across the top of them, and arranged in a half circle around the altar, with the open end towards the entrance and the avenue. These were the five trilithons which would stare down upon the sacrifices. Then, in place of the half-completed bluestone circle, a massive ring of thirty huge sarsens would be built, supporting lintels which would be joined together to form a perfect, unbroken circle. It was a sophisticated, daring design, and he pondered it for many days, making careful drawings of the various parts with chalk on pieces of bark.
When he had completed this work, he summoned the priests and declared: “The design is ready. Now we need a builder to supervise the work. Who shall it be?”
After some discussion it was agreed:
“Nooma shall build the new Stonehenge.”
Nooma the stonemason was a curious little figure; and a few mornings later the priests gazed in mild contempt as the mason in his leather apron waddled towards the henge, his over-large grizzled head nodding sagely at his own thoughts as he went along.
His ancestors, who were potters, had been tall; but fate had decreed that Nooma, while being blessed with a head that was huge and statuesque, should be given to go with it a body that was short, stocky and bandy-legged. The result was that his solemn round head with its ageless face sat on his shoulders like an enormous and rather absurd egg. His hands were small, with short fingers and thumbs that were little more than stumps. Shy and reserved and still unmarried, he usually spoke little, unless something in his work excited him, when he would start to tremble, break into voluble, unexpected eloquence and wave his little arms about wildly. But