Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [94]
And at that moment he knew that Nooma was going to kill him.
How it happened that one side of the scaffolding suddenly collapsed that morning, no one could ever explain.
Tark the riverman, who happened to be standing underneath and had just opened his mouth to say something, had hardly even time to look up as the four tons of the stone lintel that was being moved tipped off the edge of the scaffolding, struck the side of the uprights and crashed down upon him, striking his head and crushing the life out of him immediately.
No one had noticed anything amiss with the scaffolding. All eyes, until the moment when it collapsed, had been on the delicately balanced lintel. Two of the workers on it had fallen too. One broke his collarbone, the other a leg. But Nooma, who had been directly under the lintel, by a miracle of luck, managed to throw himself to one side and escaped with only bruises.
Two days later the lintel was successfully raised into place.
The priests made no comment on the accident. Nooma hoped that they had not guessed the truth.
When Nooma described the accident to Katesh, he saw her grow pale; her lips quivered; for a moment she seemed to stagger, reaching out for something to support her. And then she stood silently, looking at the ground.
“It is only by the will of the gods that I was not killed myself,” he said.
Katesh did not seem to hear. But Nooma could see that she was holding back her tears; and the little mason secretly rejoiced.
Then suddenly, Katesh looked up, and her large dark eyes looked straight into his. She did not try to hide her secret; she let her little husband see the pain in her eyes. With complete honesty, for the first time in their lives together, their eyes met; and Katesh saw, as she thought she had heard, triumph in his expression. It was at that moment she knew with absolute certainty what the mason had done.
And Nooma, in his triumph, saw in his wife’s eyes the naked soul of a woman who has lost her lover, and for a moment, in his way, he felt ashamed. But then the mason saw the expression in his wife’s eyes change from one of pain to hatred and contempt. It was only for an instant, before she lowered them; but in those moments the marriage of Nooma and his wife achieved, for the only time, complete honesty, and at the same time ended.
In the following days, Katesh moved about the hut quietly. She fed her husband and did all that a wife should: but as if he was a stranger. They neither spoke unnecessarily, nor approached each other.
Though Nooma had assumed that nothing could now go wrong at the henge, he was mistaken. Three days after the death of Tark, as he was inspecting the last of the lintels to be raised, he suddenly noticed that something was amiss. The socket on the underside was in the wrong place. He stared at it in astonishment. It was too far towards the centre by the span of a man’s head. This was a serious matter. Not only would a new hole have to be quickly made, but the lintel was no longer perfect, as every stone on the sacred henge should be. Had there been any time, it should have been replaced. But there were only days until the solstice. It was impossible to do anything.
How had this happened, he demanded angrily? Someone, it seemed, had made a careless scratch mark on the stone and one of the younger masons, seeing this, had assumed that it marked the spot where the hole should go. Before anyone knew what had happened, it had been hollowed out. It was a simple, and foolish mistake. But it was Nooma’s fault that it had occurred.
The hole would be just visible from beneath the completed arch. He could not, even if he wanted to, hide it from the priests. Miserably, he had to report the matter.
“I cannot make a new stone in time,” he ruefully explained.
The priest inspecting it gave him a cold stare that made him tremble.
“The