Winter

by William Horwood

  Reece and his men were, in Bohr’s view, very slow to react. When they finally did, something or somebody attacked them, keeping them out of the henge while the next phase of the hydden rescue took place. The images were especially poor regarding the attack on Reece and the others since there came from the attacker, or attacking object, a startling diffusion of light which affected the cameras.

  Although the personnel from Reece’s force were not seriously wounded, he and four of his men were very rapidly put out of action and two suffered concussion.

  Meanwhile, and this was the part which fascinated Bohr, the hydden in the henge began what he recognized from the moment he saw the footage as the same dance Arthur Foale had inscribed in the book he found in the library. Its movement, its orientation, its steps, its whole pattern, were the same. The figures followed each other, almost like identical shadows. But the last few seconds before they were gone was obscured by that same breaking light which made the earlier moments of attack so hard to read.

  It was only when they examined footage from a second camera higher up the garden that they noticed something else. The timings showed it happened during the ‘lost’ final few seconds. Something, maybe someone, emerged from between the two great conifers. It looked like ‘C’ but the image was unstable and very hard to read, like a piece of transparent tissue blown helter-skelter by a fickle wind.

  ‘Odd,’ observed Bohr, who watched these few seconds many times. As it exited the henge the shape turned left and disappeared into the shrubbery on the right.

  ‘That’s where those damn wind chimes are,’ said Reece.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ said Bohr, ‘let’s go and take a look.’

  They found nothing and nobody, not a trace of anything. Nothing but the ‘damn’ chimes, which seemed to tinkle away in the lightest of winds.

  It was only later that evening, when Bohr was watching the footage by himself, that he realized the soundtrack revealed something interesting: the chimes fell silent during the visit by the hydden and only started again when ‘C’ exited the henge. What this meant he had no idea but it suggested that the chimes might have significance. He decided that was not something he was going to talk with Reece about.

  Nor were the implications of a conversation he had late that evening with Ingrid Hansen, who had jumped at the chance to get back to the UK. Having a first degree in environmental sciences from Cambridge, she knew of Arthur’s work and had an interest in British prehistory.

  That night Bohr found her working late, running the images of the movement of the hydden through a programme of her own which rendered their footsteps as graphical lines in time and space. Effectively the dance could be seen as a series of lines in progression. Seen that way, as a single image, it matched Arthur’s sketches and the dance Bohr had found in the eighteenth-century dancing master’s book.

  That evening Ingrid was tired, which made her look even more geekish than usual. Her glasses sat too tight to her eyes and she wore black leggings with holes in them, a baggy denim skirt, whose hem was loose, and a woollen black top that made her look shapeless from neck to hips.

  In fact, on the rare occasion she had made an effort, she scrubbed up well: her figure was good, she had lovely warm eyes behind her glasses, and, as Bohr remembered it, good legs too. But all that was never uppermost in him, not because he did not notice it but rather because a long and uninspiring marriage which ended in his being left for a younger man had made Bohr feel dead inside. Work became everything, intimate relationships nothing.

  Ostensibly he had taken Ingrid on out of a very talented field because she was incredibly quick, thought outside the box and had a quiet sense of humour that simply needed confidence to come right out. Also, which he liked and would have responded to if only he – and she – had found a way to make it so, Ingrid was still romantic about the cosmos.

  But there was something more, and it was helped by the fact that Ingrid was tall while he, relatively, was short. For some this might have been a difficulty, but though they were not a couple, or had ever been intimate, Erich and Ingrid found a curious comfort in it which only increased their unspoken liking for each other. Over the years this sense of companionable friendship had grown ever stronger and it was a source of puzzlement and frustration to their colleagues that the two had never quite found opportunity or courage to say to each other what they obviously felt.

  What got in the way was the gulf in status between them and that they were work colleagues. Bohr felt he must not make a move, Ingrid dared not. When, at different times, they had tried to say what they felt, the words dried up, shyness, false propriety and lack of confidence getting in the way. The years had passed until now they were older, greyer and settled into a kind of helplessness. Professionally brilliant together, personally a failure. Lately Bohr had begun to get irritable, which he never had before, and Ingrid Hansen had begun to stumble and stutter when she was close up and personal with him, almost lost for words. The more she tried to be indifferent the more she failed to be.

  That evening he found her at her computers and asked what she had found.

  ‘It may just be chance.’

  Nothing was chance to Bohr, nearly everything had pattern and potential.

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘I ran a check of the dance pattern from the book you found against the cache of henge images taken from your old professor’s computer and . . .’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand.’

  ‘Well, they’re plans really, near enough. Many are based on Aubrey Burl’s work . . .’ he nodded – he knew it ‘. . . along with Ordnance Survey data and a lot of early twenty-first-century satellite digital imagery and, well, the point is . . .’

  ‘Is what?’

  ‘I think I’ve found a perfect match.’

  Bohr stilled. His heart began thumping.

  ‘You mean a match for these lines you’ve derived from our footage of the hydden in the henge here in Woolstone?’

  ‘Sort of, not exactly, a bit different, actually . . . well . . . um . . . more interesting.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Right, yes . . . I took these graphics, what you call the dance lines, and I correlated them with the eighteenth-century dance graphic you brought in yesterday and I created a mean, if you like, a sort of idealized version. And then I ran that version, which really is no more than a pattern through time, because of course one step comes before another or, if you like, each follows the one before . . .’

  ‘What time sequence does it show?’

  ‘I based it on the footage we have and assumed that, since that sequence produced a positive result, meaning the dancers did actually leave the henge, we can assume their timing was correct. Okay with that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So . . . I put mathematical values to the space-time sequence of patterned dance steps, digitalized them, and that enabled me to check the dance against the known post-hole or stone patterns we have for all the known henges in Western Europe. Of course, different henges have different patterns so presumably dancers must adapt the steps to the particular layout of a henge. What I was looking for was a henge, or henges, that matched this particular record of a dance.’

  ‘How long did that take?’

  Ingrid Hansen pushed her glasses even closer to her eyes, riffled through the printouts on her desk and said, ‘Two minutes thirteen seconds.’

  He laughed: stupid question. She grinned, a moment of ease.

  ‘And you found some matches?’

  ‘Three beyond reasonable probability. One in Wentnor, one in Scotland on the Isle of Lewis, and one perfect match quite near us here, in Wiltshire.’

  ‘Where? There are dozens of henges in Wiltshire.’

  ‘I think you’ll know this one,’ she said, retrieving another print, which showed more than a hundred black dots arranged in concentric circles.

  He gazed at it in amazement.

  ‘This is Woodhenge,’ he said.

  �
�Yes, Woodhenge,’ she said softly, with that delicious sense of conspiracy that people enjoy when they have a shared interest and curiosity about something few others recognize or know. ‘Look what happens,’ she said with a growing confidence, ‘when I superimpose a printout of this particular dance on these prehistoric post-holes, which of course is what the dots represent, as you know . . .’

  He did know.

  ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘They dance a sequence which takes them to a succession of particular posts or stones in the henge, much like you might go through a front door of a house, then into a hall, stop off in the lounge, head for the kitchen and exit through the yard door . . .’

  He stared at the lines and dots, trying to make sense of what she had said.

  ‘Of course, it’s more complicated than that and maybe they intone words of invocation as well, I wouldn’t know. But what seems to be taking place is a build-up of a quite complex but evident pattern of movement from one point to the next, starting here . . .’

  She pointed to a spot to the east of north on the henge.

  ‘Ah, yes, the prehistoric entrance to the henge . . .’

  ‘Exactly! And leading finally to an exit point here . . .’

  Again she pointed, this time to the south edge of the henge.

  ‘You can see how the dance pattern makes a perfect match with these major post-hole points and appears to exit at a circular group of holes to the south . . .’

  It was a stunning piece of spatial analysis.

  ‘What about the other sites you mentioned?’ asked Bohr.

  She showed him two other printouts.

  ‘Close, but not such a perfect match. But I reckon if I’m right that this page of the dance book relates specifically to Woodhenge then all that the dancers would do would be to adapt the dance to the posts or stones in situ, just as ballroom dancers adapt to the shape of a room and the other dancers. A waltz is a waltz even if its direction changes. It’s the step sequence that defines it.’

  Bohr shook his head in astonishment and finally said, ‘Well then, Ingrid, I think it’s obvious what we’re going to have to do sometime in the next few days.’

  She looked blank.

  ‘We’re going dancing in Woodhenge,’ he said with a smile.

  ‘Oh . . . um . . . thank you,’ she said faintly as if she had been asked on a longed-for date. Which, in a way, she had.

  ‘Thank you,’ he replied, adding, ‘and . . . ah . . . Ingrid . . . I think that until we are sure of these results and have worked them through in the field we should keep them to ourselves.’

  ‘You mean from Colonel Reece? Yes, well . . . that seems sensible.’

  ‘When did you last dance?’

  ‘Pardon me?’ she said, briefly confused, as if Bohr was about to lead her in a waltz about the conservatory and between the computers. ‘Oh . . . I see . . . not for a long time. I mean I don’t exactly . . .’

  They stood staring at each other.

  ‘Well then, goodnight,’ he said.

  ‘Er, yes, um . . . er . . . Erich,’ she finally said, colouring, to his departing back.

  29

  SILENCE

  It is said that for the unquiet spirit the early hours are a dying time, especially in winter. Both physical and mental strength is low and the desire for the release of death very great. Even more may this be true for those trapped in a sick, hurting frame. The clock ticks more slowly through those cold, unyielding hours and the road to each new tick becomes an eternity of pain and of suffering for some. The clinging on to life becomes no longer worth the while. They slip back to the oblivion of the Mirror-of-All to discover that their pain was as illusory as they themselves once were, just fleeting reflections, shards of light that race on by so fast it is as if, in the greater Cosmic scheme, they never were.

  But for other mortals, those whose life has been rich and fruitful, the early hours of a new day, before light comes, have a quiet peace, a slow satisfactoriness which allows for a smile of fond memory, or a shake of the head at some remembered foolishness when the self got a touch above itself; or the abiding pleasure of being where one is, unhurried, with each in-out of breath all that there needs to be as mind and body and spirit float between the Earth beneath and the Universe above before, turning lengthways, sideways and all ways at once, there is no direction at all, neither time, nor space any more.

  This, or nearly this, was the state in which Slaeke Sinistral, former Emperor of the Hyddenworld, found himself that morning, in the garden in Woolstone, waiting for the sun to rise. He was quietly wondering whether one more day was really needed now; thinking that maybe he had had his share.

  A hydden, even one as skilled as Mister Barklice, would have found it very hard to see him, sitting as he was among the tinkling Chimes. Sitting as he had been for hours past. Sitting, as he now began to hope, with no need of ever moving again, except involuntarily, carried by the sound of the Chimes themselves back into the universal world of the musica.

  In the pre-dawn light his pale, exquisite head, his eyes so light and grey, were little more than the reflection of the dim sky above in the drops of condensation on the Chimes about him which, to his great gratification, were beginning at last to still and fall silent.

  He was, he knew, finally beginning to die and he was at utter peace with that, as with the world. Or nearly so.

  Well, not quite, perhaps.

  For something had stirred in his awareness, far, far away, and it was gathering such pace that Slaeke Sinistral, not without good humour, could not but stir as well, frown a slight frown and scowl a very unconvincing scowl.

  ‘Death,’ he whispered with affection, ‘is more preferable than . . . you!’

  Judith’s irritation, however, was very real, her anger palpable and her scream so loud the mountains shook.

  ‘Noooo!’

  No, you’re not going to die, Sinistral, not yet, not after so long, not without me bloody well coming and . . .

  ‘Not yet!’

  The White Horse ignored these shouts at Sinistral, as all others she now made, telling it to hurry up, galloping for once from where they had been to where they must go with all the clumsy tardiness of a reluctant carthorse plodding up a muddy track, heaving a heavy load at the end of an unpleasant day.

  ‘I’m not a heavy load, for Mirror’s sake, I’m the Shield Maiden and I have a job to do and that Sinistral, always cunning, slippery as an eel, is trying to slide away back into the Mirror without a by-your-leave, let alone an affectionate bye bye bye.’

  She kicked the Horse with her bare, calloused, filthy feet and, turning her torso southerly to where the Reivers skulked and grumbled in the jungles of the sea, she whistled them up.

  ‘Go and wake that Slaeke what’s-his-name from his slide towards death. Nip his ankles, bark in his ear, claw his chest, fart in his face but do not let him die.’

  The Reivers liked a chase, they did, and their flea-ridden dogs, bored, fancied a chase as well.

  ‘Mistress,’ the Reivers said through their slimy yellow teeth, ‘oh fine Mistress, we will . . .’

  ‘Forget all that,’ she snarled, ‘just do it now, right now.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ they said, cursing their great fearsome dogs as if the delay was the dogs’ fault and not due to their own indolence, ‘we will.’

  Erich Bohr was woken that morning by such a storm of noise in the garden that he pulled on his dressing gown and padded down to the conservatory doors.

  ‘What the hell is that noise? Sounds like dogs.’

  He was joined by two of the patrol, by Reece, a few of his clipped hairs awry, and Ingrid Hansen, her pale cheeks pinched by the cold at the open door.

  ‘Nothing out there, sir,’ reported the patrol, ‘but wind and what felt like rain; and cold, like cold I’ve never experienced, except in a Montana blizzard. That rain’s going to turn to snow and ice.’

  They stared into the sudden wilderness of a winter dawn wind, the rat
tling of branches and the Chimes making an unusual din.

  ‘Drives me mad,’ said Reece. ‘Always did.’

  ‘You’ve heard it before?’ asked Bohr, wondering.

  ‘In my nightmares,’ growled Reece, with a momentary expression that told of a dark and shadowed life, ‘in my frigging nightmares.’

  ‘What the hell are you playing at, Sinistral?’ cried Judith the Shield Maiden, leaping off the White Horse before it ceased its gallop, so she landed skidding on the lawn with a volition that took her to his side, hands raised among the roaring Chimes to slap him. Which she did, almost, but could not finally, her hand stopping in a near-caress of his old cheek, which she too needed then herself.

  He reached a gentle, ancient hand to hers but she shook her head and said, ‘You cannot, you must not, I am the Shield Maiden. Touch me and being mortal you will die.’

  Slaeke Sinistral looked through the darkness of that early hour into the lonely light of her beautiful eyes and, smiling, said, ‘You heard me, then?’

  She stared, furious.

  ‘I heard you dying.’

  ‘So I am, so now I am.’

  ‘You can’t, not here, not now. He needs you, my beloved needs you. Stort needs you.’

  ‘And my beloved Leetha needs me in her way too, but . . . but . . .’ he saw something behind her, something which lightened his eyes and was about to remark on it, a puzzled frown of coming insight on his crazed-porcelain face, when he said, ‘Those dogs of yours, they kept me awake unmentionably. Otherwise I would have gone before you got here.’

  She laughed, the real laughter of one who has been alone too long and remembers suddenly the joy of company and good humour.

  ‘I ordered them to do all sorts of things. Was it wrong of me?’

  ‘No. No it wasn’t, Judith.’

  Her need to touch and be touched was nearly overwhelming. Not doing so was only made bearable by the abiding love for her she saw in his eyes.