The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [35]
A Wiltshire Farmer
Dorset. The only prehistoric site I knew there was the Cerne Abbas Giant, a rude version of my neighbouring Giant that I had passed that afternoon.
My curiosity roused, I went back to the library to heave the stack around until I unearthed the middle of June. I turned up the lights and started with the day after the solstice, 22 June.
The outraged farmer's “near-riot,” it seemed, had been a loud argument culminating in a shoving match between six middle-aged people in sandals and hand-spun garments and a group (number not given) of earnest young people. The details were not exactly clear, but it would appear that the older traditionalists objected when the younger people proposed to stand in the light that fell through the standing stones, that they might absorb the sun's solstitial energies. Their elders had been strongly protesting, ever since the two groups had gathered with their blankets (and, one suspected, warming drinks) the night before, that the light needed free access to its recipient stone. So two of the young men elected to force their interpretation of the ritual on their elders, and thus became the men being charged with mayhem.
Every bit as ridiculous as I had anticipated. And if the farmer had exaggerated the pushing contest into a riot, what of the “suicide” in Dorset?
He gave no date, but I thought a Druid would probably choose to commit self-sacrifice on the summer solstice—although granted, my only evidence of his religious inclinations was from the farmer. I paged through the papers of 23 June, then 24, and came across no mention of Dorset or Druids. I reached for the 25th, then put it down and went back to the days before the solstice—perhaps the body had lain there for some time?
20 June, 19 June: nothing. This seemed peculiar. I knew The Times treasured its quirky letter-writers, but surely they wouldn't have published one that made up its references out of whole cloth?
But there it was, on the afternoon of 18 June, under the headline, Suicide at Giant:
Two visitors to the giant figure carved into the chalk at Cerne Abbas, Dorset, this morning were startled to discover a blood-soaked body at the figure's feet. The woman, who appeared to be in her forties, had blue eyes, steel spectacles, bobbed grey hair, and no wedding ring. Police said that she had died from a single wound from an Army revolver, found at the body, and that her clothing suggested she was a visitor to the area.
The brief article ended with a request that anyone who might know this person get into touch with their local police, but the description could have been one in ten women in England. A sad death, but hardly one worth sitting up over.
I folded the paper and switched off the desk lamp, curiosity satisfied: The solstice had nothing to do with any death, nor did Stonehenge. I made to rise, then stopped with my hands on the chair's arms. Had they identified this poor woman?
Sometimes, curiosity can be an irritating companion.
I turned the light back on and took up the one day during that entire week in June that I had not read. Of course, that was where it waited:
The woman found at the Cerne Abbas Giant at dawn on 18 June has been identified as Miss Fiona Cartwright (42) of Poole. Miss Cartwright was last seen on 16 June when she told friends she was meeting a man who had need of a type-writer for his advertising business. Friends said Miss Cartwright had been despondent of late.
A solitary woman, out of employment, had to be one of the most melancholy persons imaginable.
I rather wished I'd stopped before the mystery had been solved. Why had I got so involved with a silly piece of news like this, anyway? Not boredom. How could this blessed solitude be thought a tedium? I dumped the armful of newspapers any which way on the stack: