Stonehenge: A Novel of 2000 BC. Bernard Cornwell

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      ‘I think he would have killed you,’ Derrewyn said, then gave him a sidelong glance. ‘Did you cut his hand?’

      ‘In a way,’ Saban admitted, smiling.

      She laughed. ‘Geil says he might never use the hand again properly.’ Geil was Hengall’s oldest wife and the woman with whom Derrewyn lived, and she had famous skills as a healer. ‘She told Jegar he should go to Sannas because she’s much more powerful.’ Derrewyn plucked some daisies. ‘Did you know Sannas has straightened your brother’s foot?’

      ‘She did?’ Saban asked in surprise.

      ‘She cut his foot right open,’ Derrewyn said. ‘There was blood everywhere! She did it on the night of the full moon and he didn’t make a sound and afterwards they strapped his foot to some deer bones and he had a fever.’ She began making the daisies into a chain. ‘He got better,’ she added.

      ‘How do you know?’ Saban asked.

      ‘A trader brought the news while you were in the woods,’ she said. She paused to slit a daisy’s stem with a sharp fingernail. ‘And he said Sannas is angry with your brother.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Because Camaban just walked away,’ Derrewyn said with a frown. ‘Even before the foot was healed he just walked away, and no one knows where he’s gone. Sannas thought he might have come here.’

      ‘I haven’t seen him,’ Saban said, and felt somehow disgruntled that he had not heard this news of his brother before, or perhaps he was disappointed that Camaban had not come to Ratharryn, though he could think of no reason why he should want to visit his father’s tribe. But Saban liked his awkward, stuttering half-brother and felt distressed that Camaban had gone away without any leave-taking. ‘I wish he had come here,’ Saban said.

      Derrewyn shuddered. ‘I only met him once,’ she said, ‘and I thought he was frightening.’

      ‘He’s just clumsy,’ Saban said and half smiled. ‘I used to take him food and he liked to try and frighten me. He’d gibber and jump about, pretending to be mad.’

      ‘Pretending?’

      ‘He likes to pretend.’

      She shrugged, then shook her head as if Camaban’s fate were of no importance. South of the temple a group of men were tearing the wool from the backs of sheep, making the beasts bleat pitifully. Derrewyn laughed at the naked-looking animals, and Saban watched her, marvelling at the delicacy of her face and the smoothness of her sun-browned legs. She was no older than he was, yet it seemed to Saban that Derrewyn had a confidence he lacked. Derrewyn herself pretended not to notice that she was being admired, but just turned to look at the Old Temple where Gilan was being helped by Galeth and his son, Mereth, who was just a year younger than Saban. Just a year, though because Saban was now a man the gap between him and Mereth seemed much wider.

      Gilan and his two helpers were trying to find the centre of the shrine, and to do it they had stretched a string of woven bark fibre across the grassy circle within the inner bank. Once they were sure that they had discovered the widest space across the circle they doubled the string and tied a piece of grass about its looped end. That way they knew they had a line that was as long as the circle was wide, and that the grass knot marked the exact centre of the line, and now they were stretching the line again and again across the circle’s width in an attempt to find the temple’s centre. Galeth held one end of the string, Mereth the other, and Gilan stood in the middle forever wanting to know if his two helpers were standing right beside the bank, or on it, or just beyond it, and whenever he was satisfied that they were in their right places he would mark where the scrap of grass was tied about the string by planting a stick in the ground. There were now a dozen sticks, all within a few hands’ lengths of each other, though no two were marking exactly the same place and Gilan kept taking new measurements in the hope of finding two points that agreed.

      ‘Why do they need to find the middle of the temple?’ Saban asked.

      ‘Because on midsummer’s morning,’ Derrewyn said, ‘they’ll find exactly where Slaol rises and then they’ll draw a line from there to the temple’s centre.’ She was a priest’s daughter and knew such things. Gilan had now decided on one of the many sticks, so he plucked the others out of the soil before clumsily banging a stake into the ground to mark the shrine’s centre. It seemed that was the extent of this day’s work, for Gilan now rolled the string into a ball and, after muttering a prayer, walked back towards Ratharryn.

      ‘You want to go hunting?’ Galeth called to Saban.

      ‘No,’ Saban called back.

      ‘Getting lazy now you’re a man?’ Galeth asked good-naturedly, then waved and followed the high priest.

      ‘You don’t want to hunt?’ Derrewyn asked Saban.

      ‘I’m a man now,’ Saban said. ‘I can have my own hut, keep cattle and slaves, and I can take a woman into the forest.’

      ‘A woman?’ Derrewyn asked.

      ‘You,’ he said. He stood, picked up his spear, then held out his hand.

      Derrewyn looked at him for a heartbeat. ‘What happened last night in Slaol’s temple?’

      ‘There were seventeen men,’ Saban said, ‘and fourteen girls. I slept.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘I was waiting for you,’ he said and his heart was full and tremulous for it seemed that what he did now was far more dangerous than sleeping in the dark trees among the Outfolk and outcast enemies. He touched the necklace of sea-shells she had given him. ‘I was waiting for you,’ he said again.

      She stood. For an instant Saban thought she would turn away, but then she smiled and took his hand. ‘I’ve never been into the forest,’ she said.

      ‘Then it is time you went,’ Saban said, and led her eastwards. He was a man.

      

Chapter 6

      Saban and Derrewyn went eastwards across Mai’s river, then north past the settlement until they reached a place where the valley was steep and narrow and thick trees arched high above the running water. Sunlight splashed through the leaves. The call of the corncrakes in the wheatfields had long faded and all they could hear now was the river’s rippling and the whisper of the wind and the scrabble of squirrels’ claws and the staccato flap of a pigeon bursting through the high leaves. Orchids grew purple among the water mint at the river’s edge while the haze of the fading bluebells clouded the shadows beneath the trees. Kingfishers whipped bright above the river where red-dabbed moorhen chicks paddled between the rushes.

      Saban took Derrewyn to an island in the river, a place where willow and ash grew thick above a bank of long grass and thick moss. They waded to the island, then lay on the moss and Derrewyn watched air bubbles breaking the leaf-shadowed water where otters twisted after fish. A doe came to the farther bank, but sprang away before she drank because Derrewyn sighed too loudly in admiration. Then Derrewyn wanted to catch fish, so she took Saban’s СКАЧАТЬ