The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [170]
Even modern-day religion was represented, in the person of devoted anglers, scattered along the shores of the lochs.
The driver-guide pulled his coach over to a wide place near the smaller stone circle, whose dark granite slabs resembled shards of broken window-pane dropped by the gods, and informed us that these were the Stones of Stenness. On a low hill to the north-west, across the causeway, rode the Ring of Brodgar (where, he did not tell us but my telegram had informed me, cremated remains had been recently scattered). To the north-east, beyond the church, was the pregnant belly-mound of Maeshowe, where a slaughtered sheep had been found on the May full moon.
The Dutch contingent were kept occupied translating and commenting upon what the guide had to say about the artefacts we walked past: first the Stones of Stenness, then a couple of pencil-thin pillars jabbed into the ground, and the now-destroyed Odin Stone (which had been one of those venerable objects that inspire courting couples, entertain amateur antiquarians, and infuriate the farmer on whose land they lie—hence this stone's demolition). We crossed the causeway, passing farm buildings and more standing stones, until the ground began to rise, revealing the size of the lochs on either side. Ahead of us lay the wide, low Ring of Brodgar.
I left the others to their misinformed lecture and circumnavigated the ring on my own, feeling the press of ground beneath me. Many of the stones were fallen or missing entirely; those that remained were cracked and uneven; nonetheless, the original Ring had been perfectly round. Perhaps that was why, despite its wear, it retained the feel of a precise mechanism, a circle tightly calibrated to enclose and concentrate any worship carried out on this barren and wind-swept hillock. It reminded me of an ancient brass-work device in a museum, whose function remained unimpaired by the surface ravages of time.
Standing in the centre, I looked down to see traces of ash among the grass.
From the Ring's heather-grown perimeter, which had once been ditched and banked to form a henge, I studied the countryside. Water stretched out before me and at my back; to my right, the peninsula between the lochs was littered with standing stones, brochs, and earthen mounds. To my left, peninsula narrowed into causeway before joining the road; on one side were the Stones of Stenness and Maeshowe; on the other lay the burnt-out anglers' hotel. A brief spill of sun showed boards across its windows.
The Dutch were being led away by the guide, tempted after his conversational carrots that seemed to link Vikings and Druids—although I might have been mistaken, I was not listening very closely. I dawdled among the stones, allowing the others to pull ahead, before following them down the causeway towards the Stones of Stenness.
Perhaps it was the approaching dusk coupled with the racing clouds and biting wind. Perhaps it was the knowledge that, somewhere near, a man with a knife waited to loose blood on the earth. In any event, I was aware of an atmosphere here such as I had seldom felt before: not at Stonehenge, a gloomy and isolated huddle of stones, nor even Avebury—what metaphysical authority it once possessed had long since been overbuilt by barns and homely cottages. This place held another kind of aura entirely: One could feel it brooding.
The Stenness stones had been a henge as well, although this site's ditch and bank were more elliptical than the Ring, and what had once been a stone circle was little more than a collection of slabs. They were tall, one of them nearing twenty feet, and