Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [70]
This time both Krona and the High Priest really believed that Sarum had come to an end of her troubles.
A few days later, in the modest hut in the northern valley, a small event took place that gave the mason more joy than the knowledge that at last Krona had found his chosen bride.
His son was born: a splendid little boy with a large round head, huge, serious eyes and stubby little hands with short thumbs; when Nooma held the boy up high and inspected him he grinned with satisfaction.
“You’ll be a fine mason one day,” he chuckled. “Look at his hands.” He handed the baby back to Katesh and stroked her hair affectionately. “Soon we’ll have a team of little masons,” he said enthusiastically; and she smiled weakly.
At the next full moon, just before the first frosts came, a feast was held at the little hut in the valley. The mason carefully laid out rush mats on the ground outside, while Katesh prepared a meal, the centrepiece of which was the greatest delicacy the valley knew – a whole sucking pig which she turned slowly on a spit over the open fire. There were wheat cakes, ripe berries and – most important after the pig – great flagons of the dark ale of the region and the thick, sweet and highly alcoholic mead, fermented from the honey that had been scooped from the nests of the bees in the surrounding woods.
To this feast he invited his best masons, the family of Katesh, his friend Tark and – without whom the feast would have no meaning – one of the priests: for it was the privilege of the priests to name the child.
Before the sun set, the baby was brought out and shown to the priest.
He was a serious young man. Like all the priests he wore a single heavy robe of undyed brown wool and his head was shaved in the customary way into a single V, with its point between the eyes. For some time he stood silently, gazing severely from the large, solemn head of the baby to the equally solemn face of the little mason. Then suddenly his stern expression creased into a laugh.
“The son is like the father. Let him be called Noo-ma-ti,” he said, smiling.
This was a clever pun, for it meant both ‘like-Nooma’ and ‘man-of-stone’. The party shouted with delight at the appropriateness of the name and the feast began.
At the end of the feast, when the sweet and heady mead was drunk and Nooma felt his whole being glow with warmth, it was the turn of Tark the riverman to lead the guests in song. And as he began in his rich, deep voice, the men gladly followed his lead. They sang the old hunting songs of the region, and some others of a more bawdy nature. But while the men rolled about and frequently sang out of tune, Tark was always still, his dark, lean face like a glowing wooden instrument from which there came always a wonderful, melodious tune. At last he said:
“Now, a lullaby for the child.”
And very softly, while the men and women listened silently, he began a slow rhythmic song which seemed to curl up into the air and disperse like the woodsmoke rising from the glowing embers of the fire; it was a strange old song about a forest, full of animals and birds, that lay under the sea. It was a haunting song; and all the time that he sang, his dark eyes, which seemed to be focused on the far distance, wandered round the circle of happy faces by the fire.
That night, when the guests had gone, Katesh said: “He is a fine singer, your friend Tark.” And the little mason warmly agreed, before he fell contentedly asleep.
Three days later, Nooma began to move the first of the completed sarsens to the henge.
He had chosen this time of the year because it was then that the first frosts had made the ground hard, so that the huge weight of the sarsens would not cause them to get bogged down.
“We can get the sarsens halfway to the henge before the snows come,” Nooma said. “Perhaps they will go over the snow too.”
On his orders, each sarsen was strapped to a framework of timber, and hundreds of trees had been felled and their trunks stacked at points along the route, to be used as rollers over which the frames