I saw her.
She had climbed up through the ladders & scaffolding of the house, right up to the parapet of the roof. Her dress was pale & it shimmered in the moonlight; she was leaning over the stonework, her hands grasping the newly cut slabs. She looked down into the cluttered spaces of the site.
My breath caught in my throat.
Forrest came out of the cellar. I yelled, “Master!”
He turned quickly, stared where I pointed. There was a moment of utter silence. Then we were both running; he reached the house first, & I heard him thundering up the stairs & leaping for the ladders that led to the higher floors.
Behind him, I threw myself up. My hands slid on grease. Clouds of stone-dust fell on me like a golden snow. The banisters ended in midair; I found the ladder & hauled myself onto its rungs, my breath gone, my heart pounding.
At the top for a moment everything was black before my eyes; strange spots swam & dizzied me. Staggering, I edged along the scaffolding to the roof.
“Sylvie.” Forrest was ahead, in the dark, his breath nothing but a cracked wheeze. “Please. Don’t do this.”
I stopped behind him.
She was sitting with her legs through the gap. In places the roof was a mere skeleton of trusses; orderly rows of upright stone slates stood ready for laying. Spaces a man could fall through yawned in the dark.
Forrest could hardly breathe; I heard the painful gasp of his chest. “Sylvia?”
Her voice came from far away. “Don’t blame Zac. It was me.”
He fought to breathe. I moved, but there was no way past him on the narrow platform.
She said, “Compton wanted the plans. He told me to get them. I owed him money, & . . . there were other things. I’d known him at Gibson’s . . .”
“You loved him?” Forrest whispered.
I saw her turn; her eyes were dark in her ghostly face. “Maybe I thought I did, once. He was fine & handsome & he said things . . . But I soon came to see what he was. His cruelty. His sneering ways. But I could never get free of him. He was always there.”
She shrugged, a despairing movement. “I hate him, & I can’t break free of him. It’s as if he’s stronger than me, that he just has to look, or say something, and I do it.” She stared out at the misty night. “Zac wanted to give him the fake plans. But I knew he’d find out what they were, sooner or later, & come after me. Even if it was years, he’d come, because he would enjoy finding me. And so I tricked both of you.”
Forrest said, “It doesn’t matter . . .”
“Of course it matters.” She turned, furious. “You gave me a life, & I betrayed you.”
His voice was hoarse. “Yes. But if you jump from there, you’ll betray me again, & forever, Sylvia. We will never be able to change that. In all our lives, Zac’s & mine, that image will be there, of you, leaping out. We’ll see it when we sleep.” He edged closer. “And my work . . . my building . . .will be flawed. You will have ruined it.”
Did he know that would make her smile? Because it did, a watery, rueful smile.
“Always your building.”
“Always.” He knelt, stretching out his hand to her. The planks creaked.
She saw me behind him. She said, “Haven’t I already done that?”
“No. The design is mine. Let Compton copy it. Let him be famous for it. That doesn’t matter.” He wheezed out a laugh. “Because the Circus will stand & that is all that matters. I designed it for us. We three, the points of the triangle.”
He coughed. His whole body quivered with a gasp for air. I crouched quickly, because I knew this was his plan, that an asthma attack would bring her hurrying in to help him. I grabbed his arm & bent low.
“She’s coming. I’m sure.”
She was; her dress caught on the wood & she tore it angrily. Forrest had his face down, away from me; I felt his fierce convulsive struggle for air; his fingers tore at the wood & his chest heaved & then he slumped against me.
I looked up at her, the first fear striking deep into me.
“It’s real! He’s really . . .”
She had his arms; we held him up. He gasped & struggled for breath as if it was a demon he fought with, as if the very air was his enemy, his face flushed, his eyes staring into a darkness we could not see. And he was right, because I will never forget that fight for life, that terrible wheezing, the grip of his hand in mine, so hard it hurt, his nails cutting my palm.
The sudden loosening of his fingers.
The silence.
I held him till I was sure there was no more struggle in him, nothing left to happen, no overworked heart still to beat. Sylvia was sobbing uncontrollably, but I could not cry or even feel anything as I laid him carefully down on the wooden planks & felt all the strength go out of me too.
I was shaking, & I reached out my hand for her & she took it.
Somewhere above us a bird flapped away, into the night.
Bladud
How can I tell you about the ecstasy of flight?!
To be free of the drag of the earth, to be free and high in the blue sky! Never being pulled down, or having to fear that you will fall!
There will be many stories about me. Those who like their tales grim and realistic will say I plummeted to earth, and was smashed to pieces on the stones. Like Icarus I flew too high. Like Lucifer I rebelled and was too proud.
But the dreamers and the poets will have different versions. They will say I flew away to strange lands, that I became a bird and haunt the city still, that I return sometimes in human form.
You will have to decide which is true for yourself, and what truth means.
Beyond the circle are the heavens and the stars, the secrets of which only the druids know . . .
You cannot go further yet.
You must stop now, and look around you, and understand.
The Circle will help you.
The Circle is the oldest magic.
Sulis
They were in the car.
Simon drove, and Hannah sat in the front passenger seat wearing a scarf and sunglasses, trying to look like an actress in some fifties film. They had left the city and crossed the downs, the sun glorious in the sky and all the trees shedding their last golden leaves.
Sulis and Josh sat in the back. Neither of them had brought music, or anything to do. They both just sat and listened to Hannah’s chatting, and looked out of opposite windows at the green fields, and occasionally at each other.
Hannah said, “You two are very quiet.”
“We’re fine,” Josh had said.
And they were. Sulis stared at her reflection, slanted in the sun. The dye was beginning to fade out of her hair; the roots were copper, and she had stopped straightening it; it was back to a soft wave and it made her look different. She wore a zany blue-and-green T-shirt and a new jacket Hannah had bought for her.
She felt like a shape-shifter.
“Not far now.” Simon changed gear and turned off the main road. “I’m telling you, you’ll love it. Very strange place. Forrest came here and surveyed the whole thing.”
“And if we don’t love it,” Hannah said sweetly, “we’ll find the pub.”
Josh said, “Sounds good.”
The lane was narrow, with high hedges on each side. Jackdaws rose from bare elm branches.
After crossing a narrow bridge and passing a tollhouse, they drove through a tiny village and pulled up in a parking lot behind some houses.
When the engine stopped the silence surged back. Hannah lowered her window. “Just listen to that.” Sheep. They baahed and cropped the field quietly. Sulis opened the door and got out.
“So where is it?”
“Right here.” Simon was dragging his camera from the trunk. He pulled out boxes and a tripod and some books and a rug.
Sulis and Hann
ah looked at each other. Then Hannah grinned. “You two go on. I’ll carry all this junk with him. You’d think it was an expedition to the Sahara, not Stanton Drew.”
Josh opened the gate and he and Sulis walked through. They walked side by side down a track to a stile and she climbed over it, leaving him to pick up a leaflet from the tourist box.
She sat on the top of the gate and looked at the circles.
They were incredibly old. The Great Circle spread out over the field and the sheep grazed and snoozed around the stones, so that they almost looked like a random scatter, but when she climbed down and walked toward them, up the slight slope, she saw the ring. It rose up around her, great slabs and boulders, some fallen, some skewed, some not there at all.
“It’s not just one circle.” Josh was reading the leaflet. “There were actually three. That’s a smaller one, over there. With stones like avenues leading off. It says here . . .”
“Don’t read about it! Look at it.”
It lay in a low valley. All around the hills and downs encircled them.
He shoved the leaflet into his pocket and they walked silently between the stones, the sheep moving reluctantly aside, or standing and staring at them, mouths chewing.
Where the smaller circle was, a great stone had fallen. Sulis sat on it. Josh put his foot up and looked around, hands in pockets.
“So what’s so great?”
“Don’t ask me. It was Simon’s idea.” She grinned. “He said I need to get out and see some countryside and have some fresh air.”
Josh nodded. They watched as Simon and Hannah carried the camera to the gate and went back for more stuff. Then he said, “You weren’t going to jump off that roof, were you?”
“Of course I wasn’t.” She pulled on the fingers of her woolly gloves.
“Then why . . .”
“There was a bird trapped in my room. I had to get it out.” She had no intention of telling him all of it, because she no longer knew what had happened to her. In the last few days, the more she had thought of it, the vaguer it had seemed—the voices her own, the stranger just a shadow on the roof, the girl a blur of her imagination. All she knew was that she was free. For the first time since Caitlin had fallen, she was free.
“What sort of bird?”
She didn’t answer. Instead she said, “Listen, Josh. I’ve remembered. I’ve remembered everything that happened.”
He waited.
She said, “You were right. There never was a stranger. I see that now. I don’t know why I couldn’t think clearly before . . . It’s as if my own mind grew a sort of hard scar over what happened, and it hurt to touch it.”
“And now it’s healed?”
“I think so.” She looked at him. “I’ve remembered about Caitlin.”
Across the field, Simon set up the camera.
“She wasn’t so much of a friend, was she?” Josh said.
Sulis stared at him in surprise. “No, she wasn’t. How did you guess that? She was a spiteful little bully. I was really under her thumb.” She was silent a moment, looking out at the stones. Then she said, “I suppose after she died I didn’t want to think about her like that. In my mind she became the friend I’d always wanted, sort of bright and sparky and full of ideas. I changed her.”
“Su . . . if there was no stranger . . .”
“What happened on the tower?” She nodded. “That was all hidden too. Inside me. Inside and underneath.” She looked up. “But now I think I know.” She took a deep breath, because this was hard. “We climbed up the tower because Caitlin wanted to. I didn’t. I was terrified and I just wanted to go home. But she dragged me halfway and then I went the rest of the way by myself, because I just had to go where she told me. It sounds stupid, but . . .”
“No it doesn’t.”
Sulis nodded. “Well, on the roof, she stood on the edge. Too near the edge. She was always daring, chancing her luck, showing off. She made me stand there too. And then she wobbled. We . . . My hand went out.”
She was still so long Josh whispered, “You pushed her?”
Had she?
For a minute all the years of fear came back. But she said, “No. I didn’t. It was just . . . all so panicky. I was screaming and she was unsteady and I was terrified we’d both go over. So I dragged myself away. I didn’t push her. I’m sure of that now. But I think for a long time—for years—I wasn’t sure. So I let the stranger take the blame.”
“But all that time, Sulis. All those foster homes, those sightings . . .”
She stared at him. “Yes, but don’t you see, I believed in him, Josh! He was real to me. I was really terrified he’d find me.”
They both sat in the quiet field. She wondered what he thought of her, but she was too relieved to worry. They watched as Simon took his careful photographs, aligning the stones with the horizon, with the trees.
“Stand there, both of you. And smile, Su!”
She hesitated. There was only one photograph, of a child frozen in the flash. But Josh grabbed her hand and they both stood there awkward, posing, and Simon clicked the camera and said, “Cool,” and they laughed at him.
She looked at the image on the screen. A calm, older Sulis gazed back at her, Josh grinning next to her. Behind them, the stones circled.
Simon got out his surveying stuff—the tapes and computer and theodolite. “Right. Time to work. Give me a hand, you two.”
It took over an hour to survey the site. At the beginning they were all giggling and getting caught up in the tape, but as time went on Sulis got bored and she was sure Hannah was too. So they got the food from the car, and a rug, and set up under the fallen oak tree on the side of the site.
“Look at this.” Hannah waved at it. “Must have been a huge tree once. Really ancient.”
The white trunk was bleached and seamed like driftwood. One whole side had all but broken off; it lay crashed to the ground, as if lightning had struck it, decades ago.
Sulis leaned against the splintered boughs, eating a sandwich. Above her, the sky was blue and empty.
Hannah said, “Is everything all right, Su?”
“Everything’s fine.”
“So . . . you’ll be staying with us.”
Sulis turned. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“I just thought . . . with college . . . And things have been a bit tricky. You settling in, I mean.”
Sulis smiled, remembering the lost letter to Alison. She said firmly, “I love staying with you and Simon. I love the Circus. Honestly.”
Hannah seemed relieved and pleased. “I knew it. We’re getting to be just like a family.”
Sulis laughed. She rolled over and lay on the rug, watching Josh and Simon trudge across.
Simon threw himself down. “What a place. What a site. Look at this.” He turned the laptop for them to see. “Jonathan Forrest’s survey overlaid with the modern readings. He was accurate to within three centimeters. The man was a genius.”
“Eat some sandwiches.” Hannah pushed the packages over. “Those are egg and those are cheese. The hummus is for me.”
Later, when Simon and Hannah had gone for a walk, hand in hand, Josh sipped Coke from a can and said absently, “Guess what. I’m going to college.”
Sulis stared at him in astonishment. “What?”
“Not pleased?”
“Of course I’m pleased, stupid. But I thought . . .”
“Simon’s arranged it. He’s all right, isn’t he? There’s some grant I can apply for—he’s got the forms for me. He seems to think it’s a certainty. It won’t be that much money, but probably enough to live on. Maybe they’ll let me work part-time at the baths as well.” He leaned on his knees and stared out at the stones. “Did you know that there was a ground radar survey done here in the nineties and they found all sorts of weird stuff? There are circles of
post holes out there under the grass. Nine concentric circles. Maybe four hundred oak pillars. As if some vast wooden building was once here, its center open to the sky.”
“How old?”
“Neolithic. It was some important place. And now it’s all hidden, and forgotten.”
She said, “I think you’ll be a great archaeologist, Josh.”
“And I think you’ll be a great architect.”
They laughed.
“Sulis! Time to go.” Hannah was running back across the field.
Sulis rolled off the rug and picked it up, tipping Josh onto the muddy grass. He put his hand down and picked up a handful of litter from the sheep-gnawed turf.
“What is it?”
He threw one at her. “Acorns.”
She caught it. “But that tree’s been dead for centuries.”
The acorns were green and fresh. Coming over, Hannah looked at them and said, “We should take one and plant it. You never know. It would be good, if it grew. Sort of keeping the tree alive.”
Josh laughed, but Sulis took one of the seeds and crouched down. She made a hole with her finger, prodding down into the soft soil, and dropped the acorn in. “Grow,” she said.
Driving back, Simon sat in the passenger seat and soon fell asleep, snoring softly. Hannah hummed to herself as she drove, and turned up the music on the radio. Josh read the leaflet, curled in a huddle.
Sulis looked out of the window. As the car came over the downs, she saw the city below them in its secret hollow, lit up with streetlights, its streets gathered around the sacred spring like guardians.
She was sorry Caitlin had died.
But she would never look over her shoulder again. And she might even tell Josh her real name.
Zac
My master’s funeral took place on a cold windy day in the church where he had once been married.
It was a somber service. All the dignitaries of the council sent their carriages. Some of them even came themselves. Ralph Alleyn arranged everything. He was a true friend; I have never seen a man so devastated; he looked older sitting there in his pew, & he seemed lost in memories. The church was crowded with ladies of fashion & gentlemen of influence, & I cursed each & every one of them with bitter venom as I sat there, because their city would benefit from Forrest’s work, & yet they had despised him always.
Circle of Stones Page 18
