Circle of Stones

by Catherine Fisher

  “Not the site.” My master held out his hands to the fire in the hearth. His hands are often cold, I notice. Also his asthma is worst in the mornings. “We’re going to Stanton Drew.”

  “Is that some village?”

  He laughed. As did Cook, & even the skivvy smirked. Which is what I despise about Forrest’s house. A gentleman should not eat in the kitchen, but we all do, because his dining table is a mess of plans & books.

  “A village, yes, but that’s not why we go. I have business there, & need the help of my assistant surveyor. It will be good training for you.”

  I assumed there was some fine house to be inspected & so nodded, abandoning the spoon in the cold gruel. But as I went out he said, “You’ll need a bag. We will not return till tomorrow.”

  Running up to my small room I wondered what had put him in so good a temper. After the farrago with Compton, I would have thought he would be savage with frustration, but he was as changeable as the wind.

  I threw my nightshirt & fresh linen & some money in my leather bag. It’s a worn, expensive thing & I love the feel & smell of it, because it was bought for my father when he was a young man setting off for Europe, to tour the wonders of Paris and Rome. Which was something I too had sworn I would do when I had made back all the money he had gambled away.

  The thought of my lost inheritance brought on that tightness in the mind that I know is anger—a hard unspoken anger against my father’s stupid, stupid act. So to drive it away I sat & pulled on my boots & thought of Forrest. What was the meaning of the word Oroboros? Why the serpent eating its tail? I planned to wait until Forrest was out & then consult his books on druidry & his heaps of musty antiquarian pamphlets. If there was some secret meaning, I meant to know it.

  The landing creaked.

  I paused, one boot half on. Then I stood & hopped to the door & flung it open.

  The landing was empty. But there was a trace of rose scent in the air.

  “Stop spying on me,” I roared. There was no sign of her, but I knew she could hear me.

  “If you touch any of my possessions I’ll tell Forrest and have you thrown back on the streets!”

  A faint giggle, up the attic stair.

  I went back in & slammed the door. What was he thinking of, taking in such a creature! All over the city the rumor had run. Did he want to destroy his business? Not that I cared either way. What was his business to me? But then I remembered a dream I had had in the night, just a fragment of it, of the great circle of houses standing in the sun, filled with people, its center green with five tall trees. And grudgingly I knew I would like to see the Circus built.

  We set off at ten, riding the only two horses he kept. At the corner I looked back & saw Sylvia waving from the doorstep. She wore a blue shawl against the cold & there was a pert smile on her lips. Forrest waved back. I looked away.

  In the stink & filth of the old part of the city, I was glad to be a little above the throng, but in the fashionable streets we made better progress. I was able to see the more eminent citizens parading, ladies in the latest modes & men with fast curricles & carriages. A dashing barouche drawn by a pair of glossy black mares came by us at speed, rattling over the stone bridge. I glimpsed a handsome man at the reins; he glanced at us as he passed.

  “Lord Compton in a hurry,” I said, remembering the card he had given me. I had still not decided whether to go.

  Forrest snorted. I had hoped he would make some comment, but he said nothing. He takes his disappointments bitterly to heart.

  I prompted him. “Will he invest, do you think?”

  “If he does not I’ll build the Circus anyway.”

  I stared at him. “With your own money?”

  “Why not? I can certainly sell the building contracts. I tell you, Zac, my street of the sun will be the finest street you have ever seen. I will lay out the secrets of the ancients like sigils on the land. I have wanted all my life to create such a city. A puppy like Compton won’t stand in my way.”

  I was silent. It would be risky to proceed without investors. If he was to lose everything I would be out of my apprenticeship & back to poverty. Perhaps he saw my doubt, because he gave me his rare smile. “But we are out of town, Zac. Now we can ride!”

  It was a glorious day. Cold for autumn, so that the wind stung tears to my eyes, but the sky was blue & the leaves gusted around us in great golden tempests. We climbed by steep paths up to the downs, scattering the great flocks of sheep that grazed amiably, & disturbing hares that fled as we rode by. From here we could see all the city below, the way it huddled in the saucer of its hills, the tangle of roofs & chimneys around the hidden hot spring at its heart.

  “Do you know the story of Bladud?” Forrest asked suddenly.

  “I never heard it,” I said wearily, knowing I was about to.

  “He was a king & a druid and he suffered from a terrible illness. Leprosy, perhaps. His people cast him out, & he wandered these hills in great distress, in the cold & rain, & the only work he could get was as a swineherd. But he saw that the pigs he guarded went each day to a spring in a valley & rolled in the water, which came from the earth hot, & that it kept their skins pure & white. So he enticed them out with acorns & entered the water himself.”

  “And was cured.” The ending was obvious. I wondered that he believed such old flim-flam.

  He looked at me as if my curtness had spoiled it for him. Then he said, “Yes. He was cured.” He turned the horse & walked on & I came after him. I felt a little sorry, so I said, “And that is how the spring came to be a site of cures, I suppose. But this was when the Romans were in these lands?”

  “Before. Long before.” He sounded terse but I knew he could not help himself on this subject, & soon his enthusiasm burst out. “I believe this was a place of magic long before the Romans. That the druids ruled a great kingdom here. We have theories of this—if we could dig below the baths, who knows what might be found. And we believe . . .”

  “We?” I said.

  He fell silent. We had come to a gate & he leaned down to open it, his gloved hand slipping on the frosty wood. “Other antiquaries. Fellow scholars.”

  He considered himself a scholar. It was true he had written books. And yet he had never been to the university, as my father had, or as I had been intended to, so, out of spite, I said, “Like Master Stukeley?”

  “Stukeley!” His anger was explosive. “That fool wouldn’t know scholarship if it fell on him like a tree! And his drawing of Stonehenge! A child could do better. Don’t mention that toad’s name to me, Zac, I cannot bear the man.”

  He rode in front of me & I confess I smirked at his back. My master’s book on the druids had been mocked by this Stukeley, who had called its ideas “Whimseys of a crack’d imagination.” And yet they were both as crack’d as each other to me.

  It took just over an hour to reach the turnpike road. We clopped along it between overgrown hedges until we turned aside at a tiny conical tollhouse, where the payment was a farthing each. The lane led down into a village tucked into a crook of the downs, its church tower rising above trees & its small sluggish river crossed by a wooden bridge. As we clattered over I looked for the great house, but I could see none. It seemed a poor, mangy sort of place.

  We turned between two hovels of cottages. A snot-nosed boy ran out & stared at us as if he’d never seen such things as men before.

  “This is it,” Forrest said. And dismounted.

  I confess I thought he was jesting. My expression must have told of my disgust, because he looked up & said softly, “You must climb down from your high horse, Zac, if you want to work with me. I am not a man for airs & graces.”

  I wanted to say something scornful & angry. But I bit my tongue & swung down, my boots splatting in the unspeakable filth.

  Forrest bent to the boy. “Remember me, sirrah?”

 
The child nodded & grinned. He had few teeth. “Then we will have the same arrangement as before. Lead our horses to the inn & have them stabled & come to me for the pennies. We’ll be at the stones.”

  He hauled his bag of surveying instruments down.

  My heart plummeted. “Stones?”

  He cast me a sidelong look. “Did you expect some mansion, sir? Well, I’ll show you one.”

  He led me over a stile in the hedge, & when I was across it & picking its splinters from my hand, I found myself in a field lumpy with dried dung & fallen leaves. Sheep stood & stared at us. A few moved away & bleated uneasily. The sound set a crowd of jackdaws racketing in the trees.

  Forrest stopped. “There, Zac.” His voice was awestruck. “Is that not the masterpiece of some long-dead architect?”

  The field was littered with stones. They were enormous, leaning, fallen. The nearest to me was made of some red conglomerate, a massy lichened thing higher than my head, wider than I could put my arms around. I stared at its pitted surface, pocked & pustuled with holes. I said, “The ancients liked their materials rough.”

  Forrest laughed. “Indeed. The fashionable ladies of Aquae Sulis would never tolerate it. But these stones are no haphazard mess. They form circles.”

  He walked among them & I gazed around. The space was enormous, almost as great as the center of our Circus would be. The stones stood like slewed cubes of gray in the gently sloping field. They were meaningless, would take winches & rope & oxen to move. And yet he was right. It was a circle.

  “I have surveyed this place before—I think I was the first to do so properly,” Forrest said, dumping his bag in a patch of bare grass. “No one else has cared for it, but it was important once, Zac. Look at its proportions! It cannot have been built to live in. That makes no sense. There is this circle . . . the Great Circle, let us call it. Then, over there, more stones. I found two smaller circles, which I have called the North-east & the South-west. Those are in better condition—one has a flat slab, like an altar. Great ceremonies must have taken place in them. Vast gatherings of wise men, maybe women too. Then there are stones outside them which may be roads for processions of druids to walk along.”

  He was on it again, his hobby-horse. I was hungry, & longing for some food. “Did druids have inns?” I asked carelessly.

  He turned to me & for a moment I knew I had goaded him to anger. Oddly, that pleased me. He snapped, “We have work to do, sir. Let’s get on with it.”

  If he had already surveyed it, why do it all over again? We spent the whole afternoon checking his measurements, unrolling long tapes & walking backward with the sighting poles, so that my boots stank with sheep dung. It was biting cold too, the wind rising & whipping the long skirts of my coat against my legs, flapping my collar. Forrest seemed unconscious of the weather; he worked like a man absorbed, pacing & drawing, & sometimes just standing with one hand on one of the stones as if he could feel something that moved deep inside it.

  By sunset the wind was almost a gale. Banks of dark cloud were building up on the horizon; as I packed the equipment I watched them anxiously. “We should go. There will be a storm.”

  “Soon, Zac.” He was scrabbling in the mud with a small trowel.

  I wrapped my arms about me & began to pace to & fro, my feet frozen to numbness. Then I crossed to the smaller circle. It was certainly easier to see its shape & the avenue that led to it. Nine or ten vast stones remained, & I climbed up on the fallen one, feeling the gritty surface splotched with its powdery lichens. A tree grew next to it, a great oak tree, huge and strong. The gale was sending its leaves down in showers of copper & bronze. I picked up an acorn from the ground & held it in my gloved hand, wondering at the extraordinary way each tree has its own shape, its own design.

  “Musing on time, Zac?” Forrest was watching me, his steady eyes calm.

  I tossed the acorn & put it in my pocket. “Only on the time when we’ll get something to eat.”

  He nodded, a little sadly. “Ah yes. I’m sorry. I get caught up in the excitement of such places. And it is so apt for this tree to be here, because the oak is the druids’ holy tree, did you know that? But it’s raining, & you’re very wet. Come on. The inn’s delights await us.”

  I trudged after him. More extraordinary than the acorn is a man who can find stones in a muddy field a place of excitement. As I shouldered the bag of tools I let the ache of self-pity come over me—a thing I try to avoid usually, because it has no purpose. And yet there is a sort of pleasure in it. I thought of home, my mother’s room, with the warm fire & my two sisters sitting beside it, probably reading or sewing or doing all the useless things girls do.

  And in the study along the corridor my father would be standing by the window gazing out on the rainy park, perhaps with a glass of wine in his hand, sighing over his sold paintings & his auctioned racehorses. And his son who must learn a trade.

  A son shouldn’t despise his father. And perhaps I love him still. But like Forrest, my disappointment is still bitter, & I do not have his crazy dreams of the perfect city to help me forget.

  The inn was another tragedy. I had expected at least a posting house, with some bustle & coaches, but it was a slipshod pig-poke of a place, the thatch sliding from its eaves, & only a bare room inside with a few settles, stinking of ale & worse things. But the fire roared, & I went straight to it.

  Forrest warmed his hands too, pulling off gloves and coat. Then he called, “Mistress? Your guests are hungry.”

  The woman who came out of the kitchen was as ample as I had ever seen. Greasy as she was from the spit, she flung her arms around him with a scream of joy that embarrassed him mightily.

  “Master Forrest! So hale you look! And this—is this your son, sir? The picture of you.”

  I don’t which of us was more offended. Me, probably, because Forrest just laughed. “No, Luce, this is not my son. Jack is abroad, studying architecture in Italy. This is Master Stoke, my assistant.”

  I bowed. She gave me a straight look. “A fine gennleman to be sure.”

  Forrest smiled. “We’d like a room, Luce, & something hot. Just for tonight.” He took her aside, speaking quietly.

  I turned, glowering into the fire. It was barely possible to understand the speech of these people, but I had seen enough. I was a stranger & would always be a stranger. Well, I could live with that.

  I went up to the room to wash & found it an attic under the eaves, with three beds, but I prayed only Forrest & I would have to share it. Another snoring oaf would be too much. But who else would visit here? I poured out a little cold water & got the worst of the mud from my hands & face, then changed my shirt & coat. I wished I had other boots, but these would have to do. By the time I had finished I was at least respectable, not that anyone in this hole could tell. I went to the window & threw open the shutter.

  A great storm was rising. The wind laid all the trees & hedgerows down before it. There was a small orchard outside, grazed by a flock of geese, & to my dismay I saw there were stones here too, three great ones, huddled together. For a moment I was curious as to how they related to the circles, what their purpose had been, but then weariness with the whole thing came over me & I went & lay on the musty bed. Rain pattered on the thatch. I wondered how much lower I could sink than this.

  My apprenticeship with Forrest had been arranged by a friend of my father’s—perhaps the one friend he had left. It was to be a new life for me—a new start for my family. I was to make the fortune we had lost. I had felt the faint stirrings of interest, on hearing of Forrest’s alleged genius, but meeting him had been a sore disappointment, & now with this trollop he had brought to the house, & the rich men of the city despising his new scheme, I wished I had never come. Perhaps I should write home & ask them to think again. I had no idea what fees my father was paying Forrest, but I was sure they could be better spent. I would never be much of an archi
tect.

  I curled up. Failure & loneliness galled me. For a moment I felt like some outcast, like the leper king in the forest among the pigs, lost & seeking only a magic place of healing. Then Forrest called up the stairs, “Supper, Zac!”

  The food was, I suppose, surprisingly good. A crackling joint & mashed swede & turnip & a steaming confection that I had no name for but which tasted of cream & which banished the cold right out of me to the fingertips.

  I sat back with a glass of porter & was almost content.

  “So, Zac.” Forrest watched me. “Did you see the connection between these circles & my work?”

  I shrugged. “A druid circle, sir, but . . .”

  “There were thirty stones.” He stood & paced, impatient. “Twenty-seven remain, but there were thirty in the outer ring, as at Stonehenge. As if that number was a magic one. As if it meant some harmony, some geometric truth. Three times ten. Perhaps they had thirty gods, or thirty ancestors, or thirty days in a month. It would make thirteen months in a year . . .”

  I tried not to sigh. “So you will have thirty houses in the Circus.”

  “And three avenues leading out. The points of these will form a triangle of equal sides within the circle. The houses will have three stories each. The pediment will be crowned with a circle of acorns—the fruit of the oak. Bladud’s crown. This is what my design is, Zac, a repeat of what the ancients did. I will build my own stone circle.”

  I drank. “What Greye said. About the noise. The foul air . . .”

  “Total nonsense.” He glared at me. “Can you believe such rubbish?”

  This from him, with his leper druids! The pot-woman had told us some tale that the stones here were the remains of wedding guests turned to stones for dancing on Sundays. He had laughed at that.

  I said, “People fear new things. Perhaps a straight terrace would be better. You would make a good profit, & then . . .”

  He was looking at me as if I had stabbed him with a knife. “Get to bed. I have to go out for an hour. Don’t wait up for me. Tomorrow we ride back early.”