“What was the second thing you said?” Rachel asked.
“Solstice? There’s one in the winter and one in the summer. It’s when the sun is either furthest from or nearest to the earth.”
“Like the longest and shortest days of the year?” Adam asked.
“Exactly,” said Jacob. “The longest and shortest days, which were worshipped by the ancient druids as the beginning and end of the seasons. A lot of our monuments, like Stonehenge and even our own chalk circle, were put there to line up with the sun at the solstices.”
“So what exactly do these crusty guys do?” Adam asked.
“They do whatever Hilary Wing tells them.”
“Hilary Wing?”
“D’you know him?”
“Well, I’ve seen a picture,” Rachel said.
“Well, he’s their leader and he fancies himself as a bit of a shaman or high priest or whatever, and he winds them up to believe that they’re all descendants of the druids and that they should worship the sun and suchlike. They uphold the old traditions of woodcraft and witchcraft, and all that nonsense. So, at the solstice, he rounds them all up and they worship round the Triskellion as the sun goes down. Then they dance about like nutters and get drunk as farts mostly.”
Honeyman grinned and rolled his eyes, but Adam and Rachel remembered the man with the blackened face in the woods. The power that he had had over his fellow wood-dwellers. Now they knew that the charismatic man was Hilary Wing himself.
“So you don’t believe in any of that stuff?” Adam asked.
“I believe in archaeology,” Jacob said decisively. “I believe in what I can see, what I can dig up, evidence of what’s actually been here.” Honeyman put his hand firmly on Gabriel’s shoulder. “And I believe in what I can touch, what I can hold in my hand.”
Gabriel, who had been sitting in silence since they’d arrived at the shack, looked up at Honeyman and smiled.
“Keep believing,” he said.
At the edge of the woods, Gabriel held up Jacob’s newly drawn map and attempted to plot where they stood. Rachel looked over his shoulder and laughed.
“You’re holding it upside down,” she said, pushing him in a friendly way and snatching the map. “Look, I think we’re about here.” She pointed to a spot where field and wood came together.
“Navigation was never my strong point,” Gabriel said.
Adam was studying the compass. “So if we walk through the woods in a straight line from here, towards the east…”
“I think we should spread out and walk in three straight lines,” Gabriel said. “That way, we have three times the chances of finding the tree with the twisted trunk, if that’s where we’re supposed to start digging. We can meet up in the centre of the woods later on.”
“No way.” Adam jumped in quickly, then regretted his haste. “I mean, these woods are really big, we’ll just get lost.”
“I agree with Adam,” Rachel said. “We almost got lost before.”
“Fine,” Gabriel said. “You two go together from here, I’ll start two hundred paces round the outer path to the south and I’ll meet you in the middle.”
“How will we know when we’re there?” Rachel wound a lock of hair round her index finger, betraying her nerves.
“If Jacob’s right, it’ll be obvious. We’ll just know.” Gabriel gave a small wave and set off. Rachel looked at Adam, who shrugged, and together they took their first tentative steps into the crackling undergrowth of the woods.
Jacob Honeyman had two reasons for not joining Rachel, Adam and Gabriel on the first leg of their dig. Firstly, he saw this initial outing as more of a reconnaissance mission, un-likely to uncover anything straight away. He would join the kids later on with trowel and metal detector once they’d established a few more clues.
Secondly, since the phones had come back on for the first time in days, he had some catching up to do. He had research of his own to be getting on with.
He waited what seemed like an age for the old, grimy PC to boot up. There was a long series of buzzes, clicks and boings, and, once the mail window had launched, he began to compose his latest mail.
Dear Mr Chris Dalton,
Many apologies for my delay in contacting you again, but the telephones have been down here for a while. Modern technology, eh?!
Neither do I want to entrust such an important correspondence to the hands of the Royal Mail, as post is always going missing here and you never know who might be reading it.
In short, things have moved on down here since we last spoke. There have been some very interesting new developments since the abundance of coins I told you about. I have made another important discovery and there is a new lead in the search for the missing pieces of the Bronze Age amulet that sparked your interest in the first place (my email of September last).
I would explain more, but I think things are best kept until we meet, don’t you? Thank God you’re the sort of person who really understands how important all this is. I feel like I know you already, and I know you’ll do right by us.
How are your efforts to get permission to dig going? Good, I hope. Once you get all the legal stuff sorted, I’m sure some of the stick-in-the-muds down here will realize that it’s not what’s on the surface that counts (which is really just dirt and chalk) but what lies beneath…
All the best,
J. Honeyman
Jacob entered the address in the box at the top of the mail window: [email protected].
He pressed “send” then waited, rocking back and forth in his chair, watching the development of the progress bar then marvelling as his email shot out into the ether.
He wandered through to the kitchen and pulled out a celebratory can of beer from the fridge.
He had good reason to be excited, and hopeful.
But he’d lived in this village all his life, so he knew that he also had very good reason to be afraid.
Adam held the compass in a shaft of sunlight that cut through the dense tree canopy overhead. As the needle swung and settled, he pointed out a track that headed east. Though it was clearly a path, it was one that had not been trodden regularly for some time, with ferns and spiky brambles tangled across it, and it snaked away into darkness where the forest grew denser.
Rachel and Adam hesitated a moment as they considered their options. The wood was unnaturally quiet, save for the faint humming of bees somewhere over their heads and the noise of other insects rattling and clicking in the undergrowth. By now they had reached that part of the wood rarely penetrated by sunlight, and the damp forest floor smelled rotting and musty.
“Creepy, isn’t it?” Rachel said. “Why does Gabriel always insist on doing everything differently?”
“Wish your Gabriel was here to protect you, do you?”
Rachel punched her brother in the arm. “He’s not my Gabriel.”
Adam winced and rubbed his arm. Rachel always punched hard and he knew there would be a bruise later. “Anyway, I’m glad he’s not here. He always gets us into trouble.”
“Like we can’t do that for ourselves?” Rachel’s sarcasm was wasted on her brother, who was already pointing the compass at the two other available paths.
“That one’s definitely north … and that one’s south-east.” He thought about it. “It’s got to be that one.” Adam nodded again at the tangled path ahead. “We’ll need some sticks.”
Moments later, Rachel and Adam were swishing long branches across their path, battering back the foliage in front of them. The ferns fell back easily, allowing them to move forward, but the prickly brambles were more tenacious, snapping back at them, scratching their hands and pricking their legs through their jeans. After several attempts, they found that the best way of making progress was by one of them beating down an area, then allowing the other to step over it while holding back the brambles with the stick. Progress was slow and, in the damp air of the wood, they were quickly tired and sweaty and it wasn’t long before they had to take a bre
ak.
They found a small clearing beneath a large chestnut tree. Rachel looked at Adam’s reddened face, his hair plastered to his forehead as he examined the scratches on his hands and attempted to pull a thorn from the flesh of his thumb.
“It doesn’t hurt while you’re actually doing it,” he said. “But as soon as you stop everything stings.”
Rachel nodded her agreement. She was keenly aware of the stinging prickles on her legs, hot and sticky beneath her jeans. She guessed that her face was every bit as red as Adam’s and the sweat was clammy on her neck. She felt as if hundreds of the tiny insects disturbed by their progress were crawling all over her. As the idea took hold in Rachel’s mind, she felt compelled to scratch urgently at her head, her scalp tingling. She pushed her fingers hard through her thick hair, feeling the instant relief as her short fingernails scraped the skin underneath, finding small bits of twig and bramble trapped in the tangles.
“Got it,” Adam said, extracting the small barb from his thumb.
Rachel looked across to her brother, and saw something dark swoop towards her head. She screamed in surprise as the bird hit her and yelled at Adam.
“What is it?” Her hands flew instinctively to her head, and she felt something sharp stabbing at her fingers, as whatever had swept out of the sky clung to the matted curls of her hair.
“It’s a crow,” Adam shouted. “Keep still…”
But the more the bird tried to disentangle itself, the more Rachel shook her head in panic, and the more the crow’s talons got caught up.
Adam opened his mouth to speak again, but froze as Rachel’s shrill squeals of panic turned into a single, piercing howl of pain which ripped through the still of the forest.
Adam was screaming himself as he ran to help his sister, seeing the trickle of bright red blood running down her forehead into her eyes. He raised his hand towards the bird, which had now embedded its claws in Rachel’s scalp. Rachel screamed again and tried desperately to blink away the blood from her eyes. Adam reached out towards the crow, which made an angry cawing sound at him and, as he made to pull it away, drove its large, black beak into the web of skin between his thumb and first finger.
Now Adam’s howls of pain joined those of his sister as he clasped his bleeding hand. He dug quickly into his rucksack, pulling out one of the trowels they had brought to dig and raising it over Rachel’s head.
“No, Adam!” Rachel screamed, her face streaked with blood and tears. “You’ll kill me. Go and get help. Gabriel can’t be far away.”
Adam stood helpless, not knowing what to do.
“Please, get Gabriel…”
Adam, pained and panicked, repeated Rachel’s cry. He shouted Gabriel’s name at the top of his voice, before tearing off into the forest in the hope of finding someone who would know what to do.
“Gabriel!”
Adam pushed on through the forest, leaping over fallen logs and jumping clumps of tangled bramble. Behind him, Rachel’s voice grew gradually fainter, until he couldn’t hear it at all, and his own voice had quickly become hoarse as he repeatedly shouted Gabriel’s name.
He stopped momentarily, attempting to regain his breath, and realized suddenly that he had lost any sense of the direction in which he was headed. He wiped a grimy hand across his sweaty face and looked to his left and right. He wheeled round and looked back in the direction from which he had come. But the trees had closed behind him and he could not be sure from where he had come.
The wood was still and silent.
He called Rachel’s name, terrified that not only had he failed to get his sister any help, but that now he had lost her as well. He should have stayed with her, he thought. Should have made another attempt at helping her. But he had panicked…
“Rachel! Gabriel!”
He could feel his sister’s fear and pain every bit as much as he was feeling his own. He couldn’t bear it for another second. He knew he had to do something and do it fast. He picked a direction at random and launched himself into the thick wood once again. He had to find Gabriel, or someone who could help him.
Quickly finding another, more established path, forking off to his left, Adam renewed his efforts. He ran as fast as the foliage would allow, until, on the far side of a line of thinning trees, he could make out a small, red-brick lodge.
There was a trickle of smoke coming from its chimney.
Adam cleared the trees and ran, his lungs bursting, up the muddy path to the lodge. He all but fell on the door, thumping it with his fist then rapping hard on the dull, brass Triskellion-shaped knocker…
Only a few hundred metres behind Adam – sight and sound obscured by dense woodland – Rachel lay sobbing, her head cradled in Gabriel’s lap.
Gabriel tenderly wiped the blood, dirt and tears from her face with a tissue and ran his long fingers through the damp hanks of Rachel’s hair.
“These birds are territorial,” he said. “Maybe there are young near by. It just got tangled up…”
And as he worked, gently shushing her while the sobs died away, the pain seemed to ease from Rachel’s wounds, and the cuts and scratches themselves seemed to fade beneath his hands.
Beside them, on the ground, its head twisted backwards, lay the broken corpse of a large crow.
The door of the lodge swung open and Adam found himself staring into a pair of piercing, pale blue eyes. With a sickening jolt of recognition he realized that they belonged to Hilary Wing. After what he had seen done to the Bacon boys, Adam almost turned and ran, but he was immediately disarmed by the man’s friendly tone.
“Hi,” Wing said. He was wearing the same long leather coat that Adam had seen from his hiding place in the trees. His eyes twinkled and his face folded into a warm smile.
“I need help,” Adam shouted. “We got lost and…”
Hilary Wing watched Adam splutter, the smile still playing across his features. “Yes? You got lost?”
“And my sister got attacked by a bird.” As soon as he’d blurted it out, Adam instantly regretted it. He knew how absurd, how unlikely, it must have sounded.
“Really?” Wing didn’t look as though he thought it was remotely unlikely.
“We need to help her.”
“Of course we do,” Wing said. “Come in for a minute. I’ll get some stuff together and we’ll go look for her.” He stepped back from the threshold and ushered Adam in.
Adam stepped in without a second thought. This man was clearly scary if you got on the wrong side of him, but he was being friendly enough now. Besides, Rachel was in trouble and it wasn’t as if Adam had anywhere else to turn.
The door opened into a sitting room dominated by a wood-burning stove in front of which sat a big, battered leather sofa. The walls of the room were covered with rough wooden planks, like the inside of a log cabin. Smoky oil lamps lit up the antlers and animal skins that were mounted on the walls while a tatty stuffed fox stood on a long sideboard, teeth bared, a small rabbit trapped beneath its paw. From a shelf above, a stuffed owl looked down on a row of small animal skulls that were lined up on the mantelpiece, all covered in molten wax from the large candelabra perched over them.
“I won’t be a moment,” Wing said. “You’re Celia Root’s grandson, aren’t you?”
“Do you know her?”
Something passed across Wing’s face. “I do … well, my father does at any rate. They’ve known each other a very long time.” Whatever had changed his mood was gone as quickly as it had come and the smile returned. “I’m Hilary Wing, by the way.”
Adam knew exactly who he was, of course, but grasped the hand that was offered none the less. It felt as though Wing had broken his fingers when he shook it, and Adam wiggled them back to life as Wing fixed him with a stare that made Adam feel as if he was being asked to explain himself. Even though he thought that Hilary Wing was probably the last person he should talk to, he found himself gushing, eager to please.
“We got lost, me and Rachel. We were looking for the
Triskellion thing…”
Wing laughed, low and easy. “I think you’ll find it’s that big chalk circle up on the moor. Not too difficult to find, really.”
“No. A bit of the gold one, like the one in the church. There’s a map…” Adam checked himself, remembering where the map had come from, and realizing how stupid he was to be babbling on like this.
Wing stopped what he was doing and looked at Adam. The smile was dying at the corners of his mouth. “A map?”
“Just this thing a friend of ours drew on tracing paper,” Adam said, thinking on his feet. He moved back towards the door. “Listen, I think we should get back to my sister now.”
Wing nodded, and disappeared through a yellow curtain printed with red elephants that hung in a doorway at the far side of the room. Adam waited, pacing anxiously around the room; feeling the seconds tick away and knowing that they needed to get out into the forest to help Rachel.
“Please can we hurry up?” he shouted. There was no answer from the next room.
He stared round at the stuffed animals, noticing the stubs of rolled-up cigarettes and unwashed glasses stained with red wine left carelessly about the place. He nervously drummed his fingers on the sideboard, aimlessly drawing a Triskellion in the dust on its dirty surface.
“What are you doing?”
Adam turned to see Wing standing behind him. He was carrying a shotgun.
“What’s that for?”
“I use it to hunt,” Wing said. “All sorts of wildlife around here.” He broke the barrel and squinted down the tubes. “Now be a good chap and get me some cartridges, would you? There should be a bag hanging on the back of that door.” He swung the barrel, gesturing towards a door in the corner.
Adam went over and with trembling fingers unbolted, then opened the door, while Wing polished the stock of the gun with a cloth. Just inside hung a green, military-style bag full of red, brass-capped cartridges. The door opened directly on to a brick staircase that descended steeply down into darkness and Adam balanced carefully as he tried to unhook the bag.
Triskellion Page 10
