Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [71]
The men worked efficiently, but Nooma had soon found that the oxen were a problem.
“The obstinacy of these beasts,” one of the priests said to him, “is greater even than the obstinacy of men.” And it was certainly true.
A single pair, or even a team of oxen could be driven easily enough. But to pull one of the huge stones, many pairs of oxen, twenty or thirty were needed, and though their strength was enormous, their movements were spasmodic.
“They are impossible to handle,” the mason cried in despair, and he called for more teams of men to replace them.
In the end, the oxen were used only on the uphill slopes, where their extra power was useful in helping the disciplined teams of men who pulled steadily on the leather ropes and sang as they worked.
When the snows came, Nooma tried to build a great sled under one of the sarsens, but the weight of the stone was so great that it sank into the snow and was impossible to budge; and the moving of sarsens had to stop until the early spring.
It was in the spring, soon after the equinox, that the news for which Sarum had waited so long finally came. Raka was pregnant.
She was a strange creature. As the months passed, she still spoke little, complained about nothing, asked for nothing, had no friends and no enemies; she was always at Krona’s side; and of the other women in the house, including old Ina, she took no notice at all. She did not insult them; but it was as if they did not exist. There might have been complaints at such conduct: old Ina, though she said nothing, walked about the house in dejection; but now that the girl was with child, no one could speak a word against her. The fate of Sarum rested in her belly.
Was the girl happy, Dluc once or twice asked himself? Who knew? And truth to tell, who cared? She had beer, brought there for a purpose; there could be no doubt about her destiny; and she was fulfilling her task.
Above all, Krona was happy. Each day, it seemed to the chief that he drew strength from Raka, and each day, as he saw her belly swell, he would exclaim: “The gods sent you to us.”
As the spring ended, there was every sign that there would be a brilliant summer that year: a seemingly endless succession of hot, still days followed each other and on the broad slopes above the five rivers, the heavy corn seemed to promise a bumper harvest. Sarum, at last, was at peace with the gods and Krona was full of hope. A month before the summer solstice Nooma began to erect the first of the huge grey trilithon arches of the new Stonehenge.
And during these months, the mason too was contented. After all, his wife had given him a son. The work on the henge was proceeding quickly. Like all the people of Sarum, he was conscious of a lightening of his spirit now that Raka was with child and the gods smiled upon its valleys and ridges once again.
It was true that from before the time that their son was born he had seen that Katesh was sometimes irritable and short-tempered, but he put this down to trivial causes, and their life together continued placidly enough. Indeed, the girl proved herself a good wife: she cooked well and the leather jerkins he wore were now beautifully trimmed with fur. Her care for him was everything it should be: and if sometimes her response to his enthusiastic and energetic lovemaking was lukewarm, the little fellow was still so excited by her splendid young body that he hardly thought anything of it. When he came home to find her sitting cross-legged by the fire in front of the hut with their little son and saw her smile of welcome, he would lift her up and carry her indoors just as he had when they first married.
Often he was away; for it would sometimes be necessary to camp at the sarsen site for a month at a time; and during these periods Katesh was left alone to fill the time caring for their little plot of ground on the hillside, and sitting