Circle of Stones

by Catherine Fisher

  Sylvia did not come.

  She kept to her room, & Mrs. Hall bought her a black dress. I was afraid she would leave in the night, that she might run away, because her grief was so great.

  I knew what she was thinking. That her own rashness had killed him.

  It was foolish, of course. He climbed the scaffolding every day, & his asthma had been worsening for years, but I could understand her agony. She had loved him very much, in ways I had no experience of.

  As for me, I felt anger, & shame. I had despised him, & yet now all I could think of was his kindness & his temper & his obsessions. Did it take the man’s death to make me know that I loved him too? Was I so dull that I had not seen it before?

  There was one thing I could do, one thing I could mend, & I did it, working deep into the night after the funeral, the plans spread before me on his worktable.

  Carefully, line by line, I restored his masterpiece. Compton might have the originals, but these would be identical, & so I removed all my stupid irregularities & the changes in measurements I had imagined to be so subtle. Gradually the drawing of the Circus regained its perfect proportions. The lamp shed a pool of light on me as I worked, & all around me the house slept, the rooms empty. Only once in Sylvia’s room above did a board creak, as if she was awake & moving around . . .

  I must have slept, afterward.

  Because I was woken by a shake of the arm.

  “Zac! Wake up.”

  The sun had risen. Its watery rays were streaming through the window. My neck was stiff & I found myself lying slumped on my arms, the plans under my head. I groaned, dizzy. “What time is it?”

  “Seven. Mrs. Hall will be down soon. I made you this.”

  It was a cup of chocolate, steaming & sweet. I gulped it down & felt its sweetness waken me in an instant. As I drank it she gazed at the plans. “Have you finished?”

  “Yes.” I wiped my mouth. “How did you know I was here?”

  She managed the ghost of her cheeky smile. “Heard you. I came down & peeped in a few times, but you were so intent on your work.”

  I put the cup down. “No one will ever know. One day these papers will be in a museum. Jonathan Forrest’s designs for the King’s Circus. People will marvel at their beauty & skill. That’s all I can do for him now.”

  “Maybe not all.”

  I looked up, rolling the filmy papers together. The black dress made her look too pale, her hair gathered back. The redness had gone from her eyes, but I was sure she had eaten very little for days. “What do you mean?”

  “There was a message. Mr. Forrest’s son has come home. His ship docked at Bristol & he is on his way here now.”

  I stared at her. Then I said, “Oh.”

  “Will he turn us out?”

  I had no idea. “I’ve never met him. He might . . . end my apprenticeship. Or he might keep me on until the Circus is finished.” I did not want to think about what would happen to her. Whatever sort of man Forrest’s son was, he was not his father.

  “Sylvia . . .”

  “There’s something else.” She was looking down at the plan, her mouth stubborn. “The metopes.”

  “What about them? I don’t suppose . . .”

  “We must add them. Indicate where they’ll go. Or his design won’t be as he wanted it.”

  She picked up the drawings of the metopes & spread them on the table, & we looked at them. They were a mystery to me. If these emblems and images were the words of a story, they were in some language I could not read.

  “I don’t know what they mean. What order they go in . . .”

  “It doesn’t matter.” She took up a pencil. “Number them. Put them on the plan. Before anyone can say they cost too much, or they’re not needed. If they are a code, someone else will have to break it.”

  So I numbered the metopes. I even left in the one I had drawn, of a tree struck by lightning, one great bough broken on the ground. Forrest’s coat of arms was the oak, & now he was dead. What memorial could be better?

  Just as we were finishing, there was a clatter outside the house; Mrs. Hall came down the stairs. We heard voices & her cry of recognition.

  “Quick,” Sylvia whispered. We stacked the papers in a tidy pile, & I arranged the desk as it should be. As Forrest had left it. Then we turned.

  A young man was standing in the doorway. For a moment, I confess, my heart made a great foolish leap because if Forrest had returned from death looking twenty years younger, this was him.

  The same dark eyes. The same quick, all-seeing look.

  Sylvia bobbed a slow curtsey. I bowed.

  He said, “You must be Zac.”

  “Yes, sir. Welcome home.”

  He nodded. “Not the welcome I had hoped for.” He looked tired from the journey. He glanced around, as if he still expected to see his father there, in the old room. Then he smiled at Sylvia. “My father wrote to me about you.”

  In that instant I understood she would be safe.

  She said, “Master Forrest was the best man I ever knew.”

  John Forrest the Younger smiled sadly. “He was indeed. I think we were all lucky to know him.”

  He was young, but he worked hard. In the next few days he was everywhere in the city, meeting Ralph Alleyn, talking to the workmen, encouraging the contractors. Work on the Circus was not allowed to slacken. Every day I saw the golden stones being cut & squared & shaped, the houses rising. I worked at his side, my jacket off, my linen sleeves rolled up out of the dirt, quite changed from what I was. And every night when we went home Sylvia & Mrs. Hall laid a great meal for us.

  I worked every hour I could. I worked like an animal works, without thinking. I didn’t want to think, because then I would remember Forrest.

  But one evening, when the workers had gone & I thought myself alone, someone coughed at my elbow. I turned & saw George Fisher.

  He said, “Mazter Vorrest wants you, zirr.”

  There was something strange in the way he spoke the name. I said, “Where is he?”

  “In the chamber.”

  We were silent a moment among the moonlit houses. Then I got up & followed him.

  I had not been down to the secret chamber since the night Forrest had died. I suppose I hoped I would never have to see it again. To my surprise Sylvia was there, wrapped in her cloak, looking a little scared.

  “Zac . . . What’s going on?”

  “I have no idea,” I said. The space was empty. One candle flickered in the dark. Only the spring in the floor bubbled. But in the ground at its side a grave had been cut. And a stone lay next to it . . . A metope. It showed Bladud flying, his wings wide.

  “There be one extra, somehow.” Fisher looked at me, expressionless. “Zo it’s to be here. For him.”

  I stepped closer & looked down. Sylvia clung on my arm.

  We saw his coffin lying deep, with the serpent cut into the wood, and the circle and the triangle over it. Only for a second, in the flicker of the candle.

  As I turned, Jack Forrest came along the passage with Ralph Alleyn at his back. They both gazed down at the dark opening.

  A few workmen waited outside, tools in their hands.

  “It’s as he wanted,” Alleyn said quietly. “But no one will know. Except us.”

  Jack Forrest looked at us. “This morning I read my father’s will. His wishes are clear, & I intend to honor them. He wished that Master Stoke’s apprenticeship be completed, & that means, if you agree, Zac, you’ll be working with me from now on.”

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.

  He looked at Sylvia. “My father has also instructed that a house in the Circus is to be bought for you. And he has left you a small legacy.”

  She was staring at the floor. “I don’t deserve it.”

  “He thought you did.”


  “He wrote that before he knew about me. What I really was.”

  If she was not careful she would give us both away. I said quickly, “Sylvia, it does not matter. He raced like a madman up those ladders to save you, & he knew then . . . He knew everything. But it didn’t stop him. He still cared for your life. If he was here he’d laugh at you now & say, ‘Do as I say.’ Wouldn’t he?”

  She knew I was right. And I saw in her face that she would accept his gift, & that she would make the house a beautiful thing, because it had been his & he had given it to her. As for me, I had mixed feelings. Did I even like this tanned, earnest young Forrest? He seemed to have none of his father’s dreams & visions. Once they had irritated me. Now I felt I could not live without them.

  Ralph Alleyn said, “We are to seal up this chamber. So take a last look around. Perhaps no one will ever come here again.”

  I glanced at the walls, the corbelled ceiling. It was not a place I wanted to remember, or would think of easily. All my life it would be here, dark & silent, in the heart of my past.

  Sylvia took a few steps to the spring. She leaned over & looked into the tiny pool of water, & through the steam I saw her reflection, rippled & blurred. Then she knelt. “What’s that?”

  She put her fingers deep into the hot mud & dug out a tiny piece of paper, folded & broken & aged. It seemed to have been pushed up from somewhere deep by the seeping water.

  We gathered around her as she unfolded it, but the pieces fell apart in her fingers.

  “Bring the lantern.”

  As Fisher held up the light we saw words on the fragment. She read them aloud, in a whisper. I want you to end the shadow on my life.

  For a moment the room took the words & echoed them. Alleyn said, “How did that come here?”

  I glanced at him. If he is one of the Oroboros, he would surely know.

  “It is a votive, thrown in the spring. Who knows where or how long ago? My father said there must be a whole series of waterways underlying this city.” Jack Forrest turned. “Keep it, Sylvia. But now the men are waiting.”

  They made the ground smooth & built up the arch as we watched, expertly raising the masonry so that the dim interior disappeared slowly, a steamy darkness becoming finally as small as the gap for the last stone, the keystone. As Fisher raised it, I put out my hand to stop him. “Let me.”

  He glanced at Forrest, who nodded, surprised.

  I was an awkward workman. I slid the stone carefully into the gap, so that a ripple of mortar oozed out & dropped onto my shirt. Taking the trowel, I scraped the stone clean & stood back.

  “’Tis customary to make your mark.” Fisher gave me a small chisel & mallet, & for a moment I had no idea what he meant. The men grinned at each other.

  Then I lifted the tools & chipped Z S 1754 into the stone.

  It looked like the work of a complete amateur.

  • • •

  Later, as I stood watching Alleyn take Sylvia home, Jack Forrest came up behind me & said, “There’s something I want to show you, Zac.”

  We walked across the site, westward. The sun had set & the first stars were just coming out, faint among the clouds. A crescent moon hung over the hillside, & somewhere sheep bleated, though I could not see them yet. On the far side, there was a track leading to the fields, but I knew it would be a street very soon, one of the three that would lead from the Circus. At its end was a smooth rising slope of downland, & it was here the sheep were, & some pigs too, rooting under the oak trees that grew below.

  Forrest stopped & leaned on the gate. “This is it.”

  “A field?”

  “My field.” He looked up. “You worked with my father. He was a very brilliant man, a man of sparks & fire . . . Have you ever thought what it must be like to be the son of Jonathan Forrest?”

  Difficult, I thought, but I said nothing.

  He waved his hand. “The Circus is my father’s masterpiece, but I intend to build my own, right here. His was the sun. Mine will be the moon. A great crescent of stone. You and I will build it, Zac, druidic symbols rising in a perfect city.”

  I said, “I would be honored,” but in fact my gaze was on his hand. Around his smallest finger he wore a ring, & the ring was gold. It was in the shape of a snake that devoured its own tail.

  Perhaps he saw me looking, for in a low voice he said, “He left it to me. You need not have worried about the metopes. I would have made sure they were included.” We looked at each other.

  Below us, where the trees were, all the jackdaws rose & karked & resettled, as if they were not yet ready to sleep.

  Author’s Note

  I have always been fascinated by the King’s Circus at Bath. The whole city has a peculiarly golden air, a sense of mysteries around corners, but this circular street intrigues by its completeness, and its strange symbolic carvings. I wasn’t surprised that its architect, John Wood the Elder, was influenced by druidic theories and ideas of sacred measurement.

  I wanted to experiment a little in this novel; to wrap three strands of story around one another, so that they never quite touch, but echo themes and images. I used some of the realities of John Wood’s life, but changed things and invented others, so that Jonathan Forrest is a fictional creation, based only partly on fact. Bladud is mythical; his tale can be found in old chronicles. And Sulis is a story of my own.

  Myth, fiction, fact. The three points of the triangle. One turns into another, so that what the truth is, is never wholly certain. I hope this novel has captured some of that enigma, that circling around events and places. And I hope, one day, that you who read it will visit the Waters of Sulis for yourselves.

  Catherine Fisher

  About the Author

  Catherine Fisher is a critically acclaimed author and poet and was named the first Young People’s Laureate for Wales. She graduated from the University of Wales with a degree in English and a fascination for myth and history, and has worked in education and archaeology and as a lecturer in creative writing. Her genre-busting novels, like the New York Times bestselling Incarceron and Sapphique, have given her the reputation of being “one of today’s best fantasy writers,” as noted by the London Independent. Ms. Fisher lives in Wales in the United Kingdom.