The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [72]
‘Though that’s not actually Charlie’s own skull,’ he said. ‘It’s a copy, a plaster cast. Alec keeps the original in his dressing room.’
‘What for?’ I asked, shocked.
‘No idea. Maybe he drinks out of it, as sorcerers do.’ He tossed the sketchbook back onto the seat of my chair. ‘Do you know what aboriginal people believe about souls? That they can literally be caught. In the Pacific islands, sorcerers set snares for them, with netting sized to suit the different measures of soul. Big fat loops for big fat souls, tiny loops for thin ones. What’s your soul like, Miss Robinson?’
‘A strong soul,’ I said, surprising myself with my daring. ‘One that would rip through the net to be free.’
He shook his head. ‘Impossible to escape. There are knives and sharp hooks in the traps, which tear and rend the poor soul. The more it struggles, the more likely it is to die. In Hawaii, the sorcerers shut the soul in a calabash, then give it to someone to eat.’
‘That’s horrible,’ I said.
‘I’ve seen a soul eaten,’ he said. Such long eyelashes, for a man, sweeping downwards. ‘They say it’s very tasty, a bit like an oyster.’
I laughed uneasily. ‘I wouldn’t know what an oyster tastes like.’
‘Salty and slippery’ His pale grey eyes were deep traps, sucking me in. ‘Alec’s a man for oysters.’
We were very close to each other. All through the conversation, he hadn’t stepped back, and nor had I. There were tiny beads of moisture above his light brown moustache, and the pupils seemed huge in his clear grey eyes. In a moment–
But I turned away and picked up my sketchbook. ‘I was finished,’ I said.
‘No, you aren’t. I’m sorry. I startled you.’
‘I was going to turn the top light out,’ I admitted.
‘Is that wise?’ He laughed. ‘People will talk.’ He caught sight of my expression. ‘Oh, Miss Robinson, I know I’m safe with you. After all, I’m not Mr Keiller, am I?’
‘What do you mean?’ I was suddenly hot and panicky.
‘Don’t worry, your secret is safe.’ He tapped the side of his narrow, aristocratic nose. ‘Mum’s the word. I won’t tell the Brushwood Boy’ In one quick movement he pulled the Kirby-grip out of my hair so my fringe fell across my forehead. ‘Poor old Alec. He’s no idea what he’s missing.’ Then he was gone.
I sat down on my chair by the glass case, plonk. I didn’t understand what had just happened. Charlie’s sightless eyes bored into mine, like Mr Cromley’s had. I felt a lot safer with Charlie, even if he did look like Charles Laughton.
The dig had begun. First, all manner of stuff came out of the ground: broken crocks, coins so worn you couldn’t read the dates, a whole brown glazed beer mug Mr Piggott said was two hundred year old, even a marmalade jar, Keiller’s, of course, and that gave us all a laugh. He and Mr Cromley went about pushing pegs into the ground, probing for hidden sarsens, then marked where they found them on pages of squared paper in what they called the Plotting Book. When the buried stones were uncovered, lying in their shallow graves, they looked like the pits in a fruit.
‘Question is, why?’ The usual warmth flooded me when I heard Mr Keiller’s voice. ‘If eighteenth-century entrepreneurs like Robinson, Fowler and Green are profiting by breaking up stones for building material, why were these buried?’
I looked up from my sketchbook to see if he was talking to me, but no: he had his acolytes tagging along. ‘Don, what’s your theory?’
The field was humming with activity. One gang of men was returfing the bank. Another group was digging down to uncover a new stone further along. In front of us, the workmen had a big stone already bared and trussed up in ropes and pulleys, and Mr Keiller and his young men had arrived in time to watch them struggle to lever it upright.
Mr Cromley had affected a pipe, a useful prop for a young man who wanted to be taken serious like. He took a long draw on it, exhaled slowly, and said, ‘Concealing the stones is about power, of course. They’re buried to break the geometry of the circle, and to destroy their mystic hold over the community–to wither the stone