“An Ecgbehrt penny. About AD 802, 810, something like that.” Honeyman gave a self-satisfied smile, delighted at being able to air his knowledge. Adam picked up another. This one was larger and stamped with a monster or dragon. “Burgred,” Honeyman said with certainty, naming another Saxon king. “Somewhere around about 852.”
Rachel picked another coin out from the tray. It was silvery and more sophisticated than the Saxon ones they had been looking at. Honeyman took it from her.
“Roman,” he said. “Probably one of the first struck in Britain. This one’s a few years BC.” He held the coin up between his thumb and forefinger, raised it to the light. The head of a Roman emperor was clearly visible, garlanded with laurel leaves. Honeyman turned the coin in his fingers. On the other side was a familiar shape.
“It’s the Tri-… whatever-you-call-it,” Adam said.
Honeyman nodded. “Triskellion,” he said. “That’s right.”
Rachel and Adam stared, astonished: people had been reproducing this image for over two thousand years.
“Surely these things belong in a museum?” Rachel said. She couldn’t believe that Jacob Honeyman possessed such a personal treasure trove.
“Thing is, what you lot don’t understand, this whole country is many thousands of years old. People have dropped coins everywhere, museums are full of ‘em. So many they can’t even catalogue the flippin’ things. They wouldn’t give these room space. The important thing about these coins is that they’re here. Buried by the circle.”
“So why is this Triskellion so important?”
Honeyman chuckled at Adam’s question. “Do you really want to know?”
Adam did.
With the help of diagrams and sheets photocopied from library books, Honeyman explained, as Granny Root had, that the origin of the shape was Celtic and that it was formed by three circles that intersected each other. He told them that the circles represented the trinity of female goddesses – the virgin, the mother and the old woman – worshipped by pagans, long before the time of Christianity or any other major religion. “And the circle that binds the three-bladed shape of the Triskellion,” Honeyman said, “represents the circle of life itself.”
By now, Rachel was as interested as Adam. Honeyman was prone to long, rambling explanations, and his anecdotes were often accompanied by an alarming twitch, prolonged periods of scratching or an explosive cough. But the ancient history, the romance of the circle and the fact that it was somehow female, fired her imagination. Honeyman estimated that the circle had been cut out maybe a thousand years before Christ, which would make it late Bronze Age. He told them that small artefacts in gold and silver discovered near by supported this, and that people had probably been leaving “gifts” at the circle since it began.
“Why would they bury their best stuff, though?” Adam wanted to know.
“To placate the gods mostly … and to ensure a good harvest of crops. And I suppose it’s worked, ‘cos all the crops flourish round Triskellion. We never have a bad year. Mind you, some say it might have been a burial place … or that it might have been a spot for human sacrifices.” Jacob treated them to his grin once more, warming to his theme as he drew a yellow finger across his neck in a grisly way.
Rachel and Adam exchanged nervous glances. The beating of the Bacon brothers was all too fresh in their memory for them to be in the least bit fascinated by the idea of human sacrifice.
“I could tell you where to see some of the artefacts if you like,” Honeyman said. “But how about some lunch first?”
Adam was about to leap at the offer, but then Rachel noticed the large vat of brownish liquid that was bubbling on top of the sooty wood-burning stove, and the pair of rabbits that hung from a hook above the dirty sink.
“We’re not very hungry,” she said.
It smelled musty inside the church: damp and dark and rich. Earthy.
Adam pulled a face, as though recoiling from a carton of milk gone bad. “What did the bee man say was in here?” He tried his best to replicate Jacob Honeyman’s low croak. “‘Treasures beyond belief’?”
“Yeah, but you have to remember he’s crazy,” Rachel said.
“He’s nice, though.” Adam stepped further inside. “And funny…”
Adam’s first instinct about Honeyman had been right, Rachel thought. Despite a slightly off-putting appearance, the beekeeper had seemed trustworthy and unthreatening. There had been a warmth about him, and his hut, though messy and ramshackle, had felt welcoming and secure.
The previous afternoon, having had his offer of lunch turned down, Honeyman had taken the twins to the smallholding behind his house and shown them the rows of beehives he kept. He had put his hand deep into a hive and brought it out covered with bees. The bees had buzzed and writhed round his wrist like a living gauntlet. He had lifted the hand to his stubbly face, where a column of bees had peeled off from the rest and crawled over his lips, nose and eyelids. Rachel and Adam had stared, their mouths gaping in astonishment, as the bees moved all over the strange man without stinging him. Honeyman had grinned, delighted at their astonishment. He was, he announced proudly, the fifteenth generation of apiarist, or beekeeper, on this very site.
Honeyman had sent them off with a jar of cloudy, brownish honey, a large chunk of honeycomb suspended in the golden liquid. He had also given Adam the coin he had dug up that morning.
“For good luck,” he’d said.
It was a hot and sticky Sunday afternoon and the cool inside the church was welcome. Bright sunshine streamed through the stained glass window at the far end of the small church and the twins had to shield their eyes from the dazzling beams of coloured light.
Rachel was not surprised to see the Triskellion symbol, picked out in rich red, blue and gold. Beneath the circular section of the window, Rachel could make out two figures: a knight in armour and a maiden, each one in a separate pane, a shooting star brightening the night sky behind them.
“Hey, Rach. Look at this…”
Rachel clambered between the rows of rickety wooden pews, and found Adam in a small chapel off to one side.
“This is co-ool,” Adam whispered.
Rachel looked over her brother’s shoulder. She felt a small chill run through her as she saw, in an alcove, the stone effigy of a knight. The figure lay flat, as though asleep, head resting on a carved pillow. It was sculpted from a cream-coloured stone, worn smooth in some places, chipped in others and obviously very old. The feet were long and narrow and on its head the figure wore a pointed helmet. The body was all but concealed by a long shield, on which was carved the Triskellion symbol.
“Guess it must be King Arthur, or Sir Lancelot or someone,” Adam hazarded.
Rachel was transfixed by the figure. She held her breath, her head throbbing as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing, of what she had already seen on the stained glass window. This was the same knight and the same maiden she had seen in her vision. But how could that be possible? She had never even heard of this church before, yet this morning she had been dreaming about exactly these two figures.
Jet lag? No, Rachel thought, not this time. This vision had been something else…
“May I help you?”
The sharp, precise tone made Rachel and Adam start. They had not heard the door open behind them. They turned to see a spindly man dressed in a long black cassock and dog collar, his alarmingly thin appearance perfectly matching his reedy voice.
“I see you’ve found our crusader…”
Adam stared, transfixed by the man’s large Adam’s apple, which bobbed up and down as he spoke.
“Crusader?” asked Rachel, genuinely interested. She recognized the vicar as the man who had sailed past them on his bike the day before. She looked down at the leaflet she’d picked up at the entrance: The Church of St. Augustine, Triskellion. C. 1073. Vicar: The Rev. J. Stone, BA.
“Yes,” said Reverend Stone. “We think this is the tomb of our very own crusader, most likel
y Sir Richard de Waverley.”
“Is it old? I mean, like … how old?” Even as he asked, Adam remembered that nothing in this village seemed younger than a few hundred years, including his grandmother.
“Around eight hundred years,” the vicar said.
“So is his, um, skeleton and stuff actually in there?”
Rachel was embarrassed by her brother’s need for graphic information. “Adam.”
Reverend Stone held up his hand. “It’s quite all right. I admire a questioning mind, and we’re all fascinated by the gory details. Sadly though, on this occasion, there are none. Sir Richard’s remains were probably buried where he fell, somewhere out in the Middle East.” He pointed down at the carving. “We call this our crusader tomb, but it’s really just a memorial, I’m afraid.”
Adam looked disappointed. “Mr Honeyman told us there were some artefacts to see?”
“Artefacts? Oh yes, there certainly are. Follow me.” The reverend turned and hurried away, fumbling with a large bunch of keys; marching across the tiles and brasses worn smooth by centuries of worshippers.
Rachel and Adam watched as he opened the door to a small, whitewashed room at the side of the church. Faded maps on the wall outlined the parish boundary, and at the far end of the room were two glass-topped, mahogany display cases.
Reverend Stone ushered Rachel forward to look. In the first case were a variety of small relics.
“These are mostly Saxon. A couple of the rings are gold, but otherwise the pins and all the other bits and bobs are bronze.” Reverend Stone extended a twig-like finger, pointing to the second display case. “But this is our pièce de résistance. This is why everything is kept under lock and key.”
Rachel and Adam pressed their faces close to the glass. Laid out by itself on a piece of green felt was what looked, at first glance, like a curved, golden blade. Rachel stared at the crescent of metal. It was instantly familiar to her and yet not a shape she immediately recognized.
Reverend Stone grinned, thin-lipped and joyless. “Do you see what it is?”
Rachel looked at Adam. He didn’t know. She looked back at the blade and it suddenly dawned on her that it was a part of something else. That if three such blades were placed tip to tip, they would form a shape she was coming to know very well.
“It’s part of a Triskellion,” she whispered. Now she was full of questions herself. “What’s it made of?”
“Well, there’s some gold certainly, but also one or two other elements we’re not certain about.”
“Hasn’t a scientist tried to find out?”
“We wouldn’t really be too keen on that. They’d take it away and lock it in a vault somewhere and we’d lose a piece of our history.”
“Are there any other parts?”
Reverend Stone spread his arms wide. “Ah, well there’s the mystery. Nobody knows what happened to the other two blades.” He glanced at his watch. “Now I don’t mean to hurry you, but…” He guided them back into the body of the church and locked the door behind him.
Rachel looked up at the stained glass window that dominated the altar. Questions continued to flood her mind. “What about the figures in the window?”
Reverend Stone rolled his eyes. He was beginning to look more than a little impatient; almost irritated.
“Who are they?”
“Well … I like to think that it’s an image of Sir Richard de Waverley, off to the crusades, wishing his wife goodbye.” Reverend Stone looked as if he was about to wish Rachel and Adam the same. But Adam had a question of his own.
“What’s the inscription mean?” Adam was crouching down, pointing to the series of symbols engraved along the base of the tomb.
“I think you need several degrees in ancient languages to even make a start on those. Some people think it’s an epitaph or a prayer. Or perhaps even a warning of some sort…”
“What do you think?” Rachel asked.
“I don’t know,” replied Reverend Stone, undoing the buttons on the front of his cassock. “But I do know I have a cricket match to umpire in five minutes.” From a hook near the entrance he took a white umpire’s coat and struggled into it, leaning against the heavy wooden door and stepping out into the sunshine.
Adam and Rachel followed. The blast of hot air was like opening an oven.
As he climbed on to his bicycle, the vicar turned back to the twins. “Maybe you’d like to come and watch?” He nodded towards his church. “You think some of the stuff in there is strange and inexplicable, wait until you’ve seen cricket…”
Rachel and Adam exchanged a look, before walking away from the church in the same direction as the vicar.
From the churchyard, the boy with black hair and wide green eyes watched them go. He whistled a simple tune, smiling and leaning back against a gravestone that rose up like fifty or so others, through the overgrown grass.
Blackened and crooked. The names of the dead long since worn away.
“He was what before what?” Adam asked.
The old man smiled, indulgently. “Lbw. Leg before wicket, young man. The ball pitched on off stump and moved back inside, you see?”
Adam nodded, none the wiser, then joined everyone else in clapping enthusiastically, as the batsman who had been dismissed walked off the field, and stamped up the rickety wooden steps towards the small pavilion.
“Well played,” shouted several people in the crowd. The batsman touched the peak of his cap and smiled.
Adam raised his hand to shield his eyes from the sun and stared across the expanse of green until he caught sight of Rachel, who had wandered away to the far side of the pitch. He waved until she noticed him and began to wander back round the boundary.
It seemed as though most of the village had turned out to watch the match. There were people on every spare inch of grass round the edge of the pitch; enjoying picnics on tartan blankets while children played with plastic bats and balls; dozing in striped deckchairs or perched on shooting sticks.
The sky was duck-egg blue, and only the gentlest of breezes shook the tall oaks and hornbeams that encircled the pitch; shivering in the leaves like the sound of distant applause.
Hearing a murmur of excitement from the people around him, Adam looked up in time to see the ball being fielded by a familiar-looking figure on the boundary and thrown back hard; fizzing into the player behind the stumps, who swept off the bails and clapped.
“Good work, Lee…”
Lee Bacon. One of the boys who had attacked Adam by the war memorial, and had paid so dearly for it in the woods. Adam breathed an enormous sigh of relief. At least they were still in one piece…
“This is bizarre, isn’t it?”
“Huh?” Adam looked up. He hadn’t seen Rachel arrive next to him. She was beaming.
“Apparently, the bowler’s got a square leg.”
“And a hell of a googly,” Adam said. “Whatever that is.”
Rachel giggled. “And I thought baseball was complicated.”
Adam turned away, distracted by the distant sound of a ball being hit. By the growing excitement, and then the alarm of the people around him.
“Catch it!”
“Watch it!”
“Look out…!”
Adam glanced up and saw the dark, speeding blur that could only be an extremely hard cricket ball hurtling down towards him. He heard Rachel scream, then others, and turned away the second before a hand reached out and caught the ball centimetres in front of his face.
There was a gasp from the crowd, then applause.
“Bravo!”
“Did you see that catch?”
“You should be out there playing,” somebody said.
Adam opened his eyes to see Rachel staring at a boy in a hooded sweatshirt. He was somewhere around their own age. The boy’s clothes were as dark as his hair and Adam thought he must have been boiling hot, but he seemed cool enough, moving the ball in his hands for a few seconds before throwing it back to a nearby fiel
der.
“Nice catch,” Rachel said.
The boy smiled and pushed his long hair back from his face.
“I’m Rachel.”
The boy nodded, as though hearing something he already knew.
Rachel pointed towards Adam. “This is my brother…”
Adam stepped forward and stuck out a hand. “Adam.”
The boy took Adam’s hand, though he seemed unsure exactly what he was supposed to do with it. “My name’s Gabriel,” he said.
The three children stood around a little awkwardly for a few seconds, until the crowd broke into ripples of gentle applause once again and the players began to leave the pitch.
“That’s tea,” someone said.
Granny Root buzzed around the room, skilfully manoeuvring her wheelchair between the tables, chatting with all and sundry, and dispensing tea from an enormous pot, which stood balanced on a tray in her lap.
The small pavilion was heaving; three long trestle tables accommodated the twenty-two men in white, as well as the umpires, scorers and assorted friends of the cricket club. There was a lively hubbub as players exchanged war stories, re-enacting heroic catches or memorable shots, while hungrily scoffing sandwiches and slurping tea.
Rachel, Adam and Gabriel stood in one corner of the room near the small bar. Rachel tried to make conversation with their new friend, but the boy wasn’t saying much. He seemed far more interested in eating, and was still reaching for food long after Rachel and Adam had eaten their fill.
“I don’t know where you put it all,” Adam said. It was a reasonable comment considering how slight and stick-thin the boy was. Adam couldn’t help wondering how long it had been since Gabriel had eaten a decent meal. The boy just stared back at him, half smiling, and continued to eat.
After about twenty minutes, the players began to drift away from the tables, preparing to continue with the match. Rachel, Adam and Gabriel were about to head back outside themselves when an elderly man with slicked back white hair got up from his table and walked purposefully towards them. The walk was laboured and without saying anything to one another, both Rachel and Adam came to the conclusion that he wore a false leg.
Triskellion Page 5
