Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [86]
But as he brooded about what had happened, it was the tall, mocking figure of Tark, his friend, who rose up, again and again before his eyes.
For several hours more, he sat in silence, making his plans, nodding to himself from time to time; and could the people of Sarum have seen the little mason then, they would have been surprised: for his eyes were hard as stone.
At last, when he was satisfied, Nooma slowly rose. Inside, the tapers were still burning as Katesh, rather pale, lay asleep with her baby. He glanced at his wife, but looked away in disgust. Then he glanced at the baby. It, too, was asleep; but now the mason’s kindly face softened as he reached out a stubby finger to touch its face.
“You shall not suffer,” he murmured. “You have done no wrong.”
Then he moved over to where Noo-ma-ti lay and smiled. The boy at least was his; that was one consolation.
A few minutes later however, as he lay on his own bed of straw, the mason’s face grew hard again, as he thought of Tark, and now he whispered:
“I will have revenge!”
It was a quiet summer night without a moon. The white circle of Stonehenge on its rolling ground stared up into the black and silver heavens like a single, huge all-seeing eye.
Alone in the henge, Dluc the High Priest concentrated on the stars, wiping from his mind the memory of the nineteenth of Krona’s girls that he had sacrificed that morning; trying to forget for a few hours that only a year remained before the henge was due to be completed.
He had chosen to be alone that night, and since there was no moon, no measurements could be made in the prediction of the eclipse. With a sigh, he relaxed his long body and let his eye wander over the glittering sky.
And then he saw it.
It was on the western side of the great constellation of the swan; a small but very bright star that he had never seen before, and as he looked carefully he saw that behind it in a broad V-shape stretched a gleaming cloud of light. This, he knew at once, was one of those strangest of all the heavenly bodies, the wanderers which the people called the stars with hair and which appeared only once or twice in a life time. The astronomers had kept records in the sacred sayings of every one for centuries, and since there was no pattern in their movements, they knew for certain that they were special signs to them from the gods. He gazed at the new star intently and as he did so, he realised its most remarkable feature – the trail of hair behind this messenger from the gods was not silver, as the sayings told them to expect, but golden.
“The head of this star is crowned with gold,” he said aloud. As he did so, he realised the huge significance the statement might have. Could it be that, at last, the time of their salvation had come? Surely that must be the meaning of such a portent in the sky; yet after so many disappointments he could hardly bring himself to believe it.
He watched it carefully all night: it was moving slowly and growing larger.
By the following night, all the people of Sarum had seen it. The priests gathered at the henge and together they watched the golden-haired star and made exact note of its movements. It grew brighter still and before dawn it had moved half way into the constellation of the swan. On that second day, even after dawn had broken, it could still be seen in the early morning sky.
It was then that the High Priest showed both his faith and his courage.
In front of all the priests he firmly declared:
“The gods have not deserted Sarum or their faithful priests. This is the sign for which we have waited.” And then he added: “Bring me a ram, so that I can sacrifice it at once to the greatest of all gods, sun. And let all Sarum know that the sun is honoured again at the temple