Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [90]
It was the fault of the masons shaping the stones. For the last two years Nooma had been fighting a battle to keep their work moving swiftly. First one or two would fall sick and have to be replaced. Then the replacements would need to be trained, or mistakes would be made. With his time now divided between the quarry and the henge, it was difficult for the mason to supervise everything, and at times he knew that his men had become discouraged.
But the result of this was that over a period of five years, not enough sarsens reached the henge.
All that summer he had chivvied the masons, for before the equinox, all the sarsens should be completed and ready for transportation; but as that day approached, he could see that the final shaping of the stones would not be finished.
The great dedication of the henge was due to take place the following summer. If the ground was soft in the spring, and it often was, then it would be too late to try to take any more sarsens to the henge. There was only one thing to do.
“We shall have to transport all the sarsens to the henge now,” the mason said. “We can finish shaping them there.”
When he reported his difficulties to the priests, he could see that they were angry. The will of the gods and the fate of Sarum was not to be jeopardised by the failure of the little mason to complete his appointed task. When the priests reported to Dluc, the High Priest frowned dangerously.
“If necessary, every man in Sarum shall work on the henge,” he ordered. “There must be no delays.”
And an order went out that day that the priest would marry no man in Sarum who had passed fifteen summers if he did not work at hauling the stones that year.
By three days after the quinox, nearly a thousand men were assembled at the sarsen site, and helping to supervise them was Tark the riverman.
Tark felt sorry for the little mason. Though he had admittedly stolen his wife, it did not lessen his respect for the craftsman and he did all he could to help him now. He was everywhere, finding provisions, preparing extra tents to house the men as they hauled the sarsens over the ridges, and encouraging the men.
Nooma saw this. But what he saw above all, were the eyes of the priests as he made the final preparations. For now their eyes when they looked at him were hard and cold, and inwardly the mason trembled.
There were ten sarsens to move. Two journeys were needed. One by one the sarsens were strapped to the frames, and on the fifth day after the equinox, the enormous caravan began to make its way across the ridges, raising a steady cloud of dust.
It was four days before Winter Day when the five sarsens reached the henge. Never before had the journey been done so quickly, and the men, already exhausted by the crippling pace that had been set, returned to begin their journey for the second time. More slowly this time, despite the urging of Nooma, Tark and the frequent whippings of the priests, the men dragged their ungainly burdens along.
The disaster, when it struck, came in the form of a snowstorm – a three-day blizzard more violent, and much earlier in the year, than any the mason could remember. For three days it raged without stopping, a searing northeasterly wind driving the snow into enormous drifts. During this time, the men were crowded into hastily erected huts and deerskin tents in which they huddled miserably. The sudden cold was terrible. By the third day, a hundred men had frostbite.
Nooma watched the snow with terror. Before his eyes, first the wooden runners, then the frames, and finally even the huge sarsens themselves began to disappear in the snow. Two of the sarsens were on an incline where the snow was rapidly drifting; on the second day, he and Tark had to go out into the raging blizzard and place stakes around each sarsen to mark the spot where it lay. By the third, only the top of the stakes could be seen.
On the third day, the blizzard stopped.
When Nooma looked out over the high ground his heart sank. For mile after mile, the snow lay thick. The rifts