Stonehenge: A Novel of 2000 BC

The boys had to wrestle against men for their next test. It did not matter if they won or lost, indeed no one expected a half-starved boy to beat a full-grown man, but it was important that they fought well and showed bravery. Saban found himself pitted against Dioga, a freed Outfolk slave noted for his bear-like strength. The crowd laughed at the mismatch between boy and man, but Saban was faster than any of them expected. He slipped Dioga’s rush, kicked him, slipped past him again, slapped him, jeered at him and landed one blow that stung Dioga’s face and then the bigger man at last caught the boy, threw him down and began to throttle him with his big hands. Saban clawed at Dioga’s tattooed face, attempting to hook his fingers into the man’s eye-sockets, but Dioga just grunted and bore down with his thumbs on Saban’s windpipe until Gilan hit him with a staff and made him let go. ‘Well done, boy,’ the high priest said. Saban choked as he tried to answer, then sat with the other boys and heaved breath into his starving lungs.

The seventeen boys endured the fire last. They stood with their backs to the flames as a priest heated the sharpened tip of an ash branch until it was red hot, then placed the glowing tip on their shoulder blades and left it there until the skin bubbled. Gilan stared into their faces to make certain they did not cry. Saban sang the rage song of Rannos as the fire scorched his back, and the heat was such that he thought he would have to cry aloud, but the pain passed and Gilan grinned his approval. ‘Well done,’ the high priest said again, ‘well done,’ and Saban’s heart was so full of joy he could have flown like a bird.

He was a man. He could take a bride, own a slave, keep his own livestock, give himself a new name and speak in the tribal meetings. Neel, the young priest, presented Saban with the chalk ball that was his childhood’s spirit shelter and Saban danced up and down on it, breaking and powdering the chalk as he whooped with delight. His father, unable to conceal his pleasure, gave him a wolfskin tunic, a fine spear and a bronze knife with a wooden handle. His mother gave him an amulet of amber, which had been a gift to her from Lengar, and Saban tried to make her keep it for she was sick, but she would not take it back. Galeth gave him a yew longbow, then sat him down and tattooed the marks of manhood on his chest. He used a bone comb that he dipped in woad, then hammered into Saban’s skin; the pain meant nothing to Saban for now he was a man. ‘You can take a new name now,’ Galeth said.

‘Hand-Splitter,’ Saban said jokingly.

Galeth laughed. ‘I thought that was your work. Well done. But you’ve made a lifelong enemy.’

‘An enemy,’ Saban said, ‘who will find it hard to hold a bow or wield a spear.’

‘But a dangerous man,’ Galeth warned him.

‘A crippled man now,’ Saban said, for he had heard that the flint knife had bitten right through the sinews of Jegar’s hand.

‘A worse enemy for that,’ Galeth said. ‘So will you change your name?’

‘I shall keep it,’ Saban said. His birth name meant Favoured One and he reckoned it was apt. He watched the blood and woad trickle down his skin. He was a man! Then, with the sixteen others who had passed the ordeals, Saban sat down to a feast of meat, bread and honey, and while they ate, the women of the tribe sang the battle song of Arryn. By the meal’s end the sun was going down and the girls who had been sequestered all day in the Temple of Lahanna were taken to the Temple of Slaol. The tribe lined the path from the settlement to the temple and they danced and clapped as the seventeen men followed the girls who would now become women.

Derrewyn was not among the girls. She was too valuable as a bride to be given to that night’s revelry, but next morning, as Saban walked back into the settlement to find a place where he could build his own hut, Derrewyn greeted him. She gave him one of her precious necklaces of white sea-shells. Saban blushed at the gift and Derrewyn laughed at his confusion.

And that same day Gilan began to plan how the eight stones would be placed.

The new men were not expected to work on the day after their ordeals, so Saban wandered up onto the hill to watch Gilan begin his work in the Old Temple. Butterflies were everywhere, a host of blue and white scraps being blown across the flower-studded grass where a score of people were digging the chalk with antler picks to make ditches and banks that would flank a new sacred path leading to the temple’s gate of the sun.

Saban walked to the western side of the temple and sat on the grass. His new spear was beside him and he wondered when he would first use it in battle. He was a man now, but the tribe would expect him to kill an enemy before he was reckoned a proper adult. He drew out the bronze knife his father had given him and admired it in the sunlight. The blade was short, scarce as long as Saban’s hand, but the metal had been incised with a thousand tiny indentations that made a complex pattern. A man’s knife, Saban thought, and he tilted the blade from side to side so that the sun flashed from the metal.

Derrewyn’s voice spoke behind him, ‘My uncle has a sword just like that. He says it was made in the land across the western sea.’

Saban twisted round and stared up at her. ‘Your uncle?’ He asked.

‘Kital, chief of Cathallo.’ She paused. ‘Of course.’ She crouched beside him and placed a delicate finger to the blue-red scabs of his new tattoos. ‘Did that hurt?’ she asked.

‘No,’ Saban boasted.

‘It must have done.’

‘A little,’ he conceded.

‘Better those scars than being killed by Jegar,’ Derrewyn said.

‘He wouldn’t have killed me,’ Saban said. ‘He just wanted to drag me back to Ratharryn and make me carry the chalk to my father.’

‘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?’