The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [89]
Suddenly Moon Daughter, too, seems a long way ahead in the darkness, an indistinct shape passing the Devil’s Chair.
That is Moon Daughter, isn’t it?
The far-off note of the plane’s engine changes as I run to catch her up. The winking lights are losing height, wheeling, dropping steeply downwards, coming closer. And then the throbbing starts, a great white beam stabs down out of the sky, my heartbeat ratchets up, I can hardly catch my breath–
Not a plane at all. A helicopter.
There it is, over Waden Hill, racing towards me, following the path of the stones in the Avenue, its white searchlight fingering the contours of the muddy fields. I shrink back against the Devil’s Chair, convinced against all sense it’s hunting for me. But then comes the roar of a car engine, screaming into a gear change as it shoots round the bend. Headlights blaze across the grass as it takes the road through the circle. The helicopter sweeps overhead, trying to pin the car with its searchlight. For a moment it catches it, a silvery hatchback with four baseball-capped heads silhouetted inside, and then the car skids across the curve by the Red Lion, narrowly missing the car-park wall, and disappears in the direction of Swindon, the helicopter in pursuit.
‘Bloody pigs,’ says Moon Daughter, child of the rebellious sixties, waiting for me and holding the gate by the bank open. ‘Hope they get away.’
Fifteen seconds earlier, if she hadn’t waited for me, she’d have been crossing the road as the silver car raced round the corner.
If there was anyone behind me, they’ve gone. I let the gate shut, click, and follow Moon Daughter in the wake of Trevor’s ritual procession, sunwise, round the perimeter of Avebury.
It’s an involved route: past the social centre, through the visitors’ car park, along the side of the village cricket pitch, across the high street, then through the tall wrought-iron gates onto the Manor driveway. Eventually we end up at the main road again, at the northern entrance to the circle. Trevor recommends the agile enter by crawling under the side of the Swindon Stone. The megalith is diamond-shaped, and one corner juts to meet the fence, leaving a gap just big enough for–
Martin emerges with mud on his knees and elbows, and a happy grin.
‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d squeeze through that,’ I tell him.
‘I’m a caver. You learn Houdini wriggles for tight spots. Your turn, I think. Go back and come through the proper way.’
‘Not on your nelly.’ I’m not risking another pair of jeans.
Trevor leads us to the Adam and Eve stones, all that remains of the three-sided Cove at the heart of the northern inner circle. He stretches out his arms, beaming. Obediently we form a circle, my left hand clasping Martin’s hairy paw, my right in the clammy grip of one of the stick-thin girls, who’s giggling a lot.
‘Merry meet!’ Trevor casts an approving eye round his enlarged coven. ‘No, hang on a minute–first full moon since the equinox, we should balance the circle. Can we rearrange ourselves so we go boy, girl, boy, girl?’ There’s some shuffling and I end up with a white-robed, spike-haired Druid on my right.
‘Merry meet!’ calls Trevor again.
‘Merry meet,’ we all chorus obediently. Two deep voices are coming from behind us: tallish lads wearing sheepskin caps with earflaps, standing self-consciously apart. Martin raises his eyebrows enquiringly.
‘Northern tradition,’ I whisper. ‘Odin, Valhalla, all that manly stuff. Big in Yorkshire. They think it’s cissy to hold hands in a circle.’
Trevor invokes the elemental spirits: East, South, West and North; Air, Fire, Water and Earth. He does it in a quiet, thoughtful way that I much prefer to the American Druid’s bluster on the day of the museum protest. With each invocation we drop hands and spin to face in the correct direction. At the end Trevor’s partner, Michelle, lights a lantern and sets it in the middle before stepping back and joining hands