Sam Christer
The Stonehenge Legacy
To my son Elliott in his last year of sixth form — I couldn’t be
prouder of everything you’ve done or how you’ve done it.
PART ONE
The stones are great
And magic power they have
Men that are sick
Fare to that stone
And they wash that stone
And with that water bathe away their sickness
1
Mist rolls like vaporous tumbleweed in the dead of the Wiltshire night. Out in the flat, sprawling fields hooded Lookers tilt their heads skywards to witness the first sliver of silver. The moon is new, showing only a faint flash of virginal white beneath a voluminous wrap of black-velvet haute couture.
On the horizon, a pale face turns in its cowl. A fiery torch is raised in an old hand. Hushed but urgent words pass from Looker to Looker. The sacrifice is ready. He has been brought from his fast. Seven days without food. No light, nor sound, nor touch, nor smell. His body has been cleansed of the impurities he has ingested. His senses sharpened. His mind focused on his fate.
The Lookers are robed in hand-woven sackcloth, belted with string plaited from plants, their feet shod in rough animal skins. It is the way of the ancients, the creators of the Craft.
The Cleansers remove the man’s grimy clothes. He will leave this world with no more than he entered it. They pull a ring from his finger. A watch from his wrist. And from around his neck, a crude gold chain dangling a symbol of some false god.
They carry him, fighting, to the river and immerse him. Cold water fills his mouth and gurgles and froths in his corrupted lungs. He struggles like a startled fish, seeking a safe current to escape the hands of his captors.
It is not to be.
Once purified, he is dragged spluttering to the shore. The Bearers fall upon him and bind him with strips of bark to a litter made from pine, the noble tree that stepped with them from the age of ice. They hoist him high on to their shoulders. Carry him like proud and loving men bearing the coffin of a beloved brother. He is precious to them.
Their walk is long — more than two miles. South from the ancient encampment of Durrington. On to the great avenue, down to where the bluestones and the forty-ton sarsens are sited.
The Bearers make no complaints. They know the pain their forefathers suffered moving the mighty stones hundreds of miles. The astroarchitects trekked through hills and valleys, crossed stormy seas. With antlers of red deer and shoulder-blades of cattle, they dug the pits where the circle now stands. Behind the Bearers come the Followers. All male. All dressed identically in hooded, coarse brown robes. They have come from across Britain, Europe and all corners of the globe. For tonight is the new Henge Master’s first sacrifice. An overdue offering to the gods. One that will rejuvenate the spiritual strength of the stones.
The Bearers pause at the Heel Stone, the massive chunk of leaning sandstone that is home to the Sky God. It dwarfs all around it, except the gigantic sarsens standing eighty yards away.
In the centre of the megalithic portal a bonfire flickers in the darkness, its smoking fingers grasping at the moon, illuminating the Henge Master as he raises his hands. He pauses then sweeps them in a slow arc, pressing back the wall of energy surging between him and the horseshoe of towering trilithons.
‘Great gods, I feel your eternal presence. Earth Mother most eternal, Sky Father most supreme, we gather in your adoration and dutifully kneel in your presence.’
The secret congregation of hooded figures sinks silently to the soil. ‘We, your obedient children, the Followers of the Sacreds, are gathered here on the bones of our ancestors to honour you and to show you our devotion and loyalty.’
The Master claps his hands and leaves them joined above his head, fingers pointing in prayer to the heavens. The Bearers rise from their knees. Once more they lift upon their shoulders the naked young man tethered to the rough litter.
‘We thank you, all you great gods who look over us and who bless us. In respect to you and the ways of the ancients, we dedicate this sacrifice.’
The Bearers begin their final journey, out through the giant stone archways towards the sacrificial point that lies on the line of the solstice.
The Slaughter Stone.
They lay the young man upon the long grey slab. The Henge Master looks down and lowers his joined hands to touch the forehead of the sacrifice. He is not afraid to look into the terrorised blue eyes beneath him. He has prepared himself to banish all feelings of compassion. Just as a king would exile a traitor.
He slowly circles his joined hands around the man’s face as he continues the words of the ritual. ‘In the names of our fathers, our mothers, our protectors and our mentors, we absolve you from your earthly sins and through your mortal sacrifice we purify your spirit and speed you on your journey to eternal life in paradise.’
Only now does the Henge Master separate his palms. He spreads them wide. Half of him is lit bone-white by the moon, half blood-red by the fire. His body is in balance with the lunar phase. His silhouette against the great stones is that of a cruciform.
Into each outstretched hand the Bearers place the sacred tools. The Henge Master grips them, his fingers folding around smooth, wooden shafts carved centuries ago.
The first flint axe strikes the head of the sacrifice.
Then the second.
Now the first again.
Blows rain down until bone and skin collapse like an eggshell. With the death of the sacrifice comes a roar from the crowd. A triumphant cheer as the Master moves back, his arms spread wide for them to see the sacrificial blood spattered on his robes and flesh.
‘Just as you shed blood and broke bones to assemble this godly portal to protect us, so too do we shed our blood and break our bones for you.’
One by one the Followers come forward. They dip their fingers in the blood of the sacrifice, mark their foreheads. Then walk back into the main circle and kiss the trilithons.
Blessed and blooded, they bow before silently disappearing into the dark Wiltshire fields.
2
Professor Nathaniel Chase sits at a desk in the oak-walled study of his seventeenth-century country mansion and through the leaded windows watches morning twilight yield to a summer sunrise. It’s a daily battle that he never misses.
A colourful male pheasant struts the lawn, cued by the first light on the dew-soaked grass. Dull females follow in the bird’s wake, then feign disinterest and peck at fat-filled coconut shells strung out by Chase’s gardener.
The male proudly spreads his wings to form a cape of iridescent copper. His head, ears and neck are tropical green and his throat and cheeks an exotic glossed purple. A distinctive white band around his neck gives him a priestly stature while his face and wattle are a deep red. The bird is melanistic — some kind of mutation of the common pheasant. As the professor looks closer, he suspects that a few generations back there must also have been some crossing with a rare green pheasant or two.
Chase is a successful man. More than most ever dream of being. Academically brilliant, he has been hailed as one of Cambridge’s finest brains. His books on art and archaeology have sold globally and built a following beyond those bound to buy them for study. But his vast fortune and luxuriously refined lifestyle don’t come from his learned ways. He left Cambridge many years back and turned his talents to sourcing, identifying, buying and selling some of the rarest artefacts in the world. It was a practice that earned him a regular place in the rich list and a whispered reputation as something of a grave-robber.