Winter

by William Horwood

  ‘These places were built successively over centuries by different groups of builders who probably had a whole range of beliefs. Sometimes, just like humans and hydden, they razed a site and started again.

  ‘That makes the landscape in which they were set as important as the structures themselves. Without appreciating one it is hard to understand the other.’

  Stort’s first concern was that humans should have been so insensitive as to replace the wooden posts with concrete ones.

  ‘They have missed the point and robbed the site of something of its power,’ he said.

  His bad mood was temporary for he found much of interest in the adjacent and much larger site of Durrington Walls. This was a vast semi-circular embankment immediately to the north of the henge and enclosing a rough grassy area the size of several football pitches.

  ‘It seems plain enough to me,’ he declared after two days’ exploration, ‘that this extraordinary site had several interrelated uses. I would suggest that its primary one was as a collecting point for hydden and human folk together, engaged in rituals of a hydden origin now all but forgotten. These “walls”, as the humans insist on calling them, inclined as they are to think of defence and attack and enclosure, are nothing of the kind. They are no more nor less than comfortable seating for faithful and awe-inspired mortals, come to watch the greatest ritual of them all, which, as we have seen, takes us from the realm of the living to what ancient folk wrongly construed as the eternity of death.

  ‘Quite obviously the concrete posts of Woodhenge mark out in a vestigial kind of way the ancient place or house or humble from which that journey started. Perhaps it was here that the remains of the recently dead were in some way consecrated before their spirits, as they were once called, were deemed to have left their mortal remains. Only then, and still living in a sense, did they begin their journey south and west, into the setting sun, to their final resting place.’

  Stort spoke these words standing on a wooden table whose original purpose was as a picnic table for humans but which he now used as a soapbox for his learned oratory.

  ‘Ah, thank you, Katherine, I will have more of this excellent brew if you please!’

  ‘Stort,’ said Jack, ‘I know we’ve seen no humans about but you’re making yourself very obvious from miles away . . .’

  But Stort was in no mood to be stopped and at least in such open ground Jack was well able to see if any danger appeared. Meanwhile Stort stood suddenly taller, having had a new insight even as he spoke, and which seemed to him both revolutionary and important.

  ‘I begin to see,’ he cried out in a voice that might well have been heard by the deafest of his prehistoric listeners, were they assembled there, ‘that these ancient hydden were seduced by the gloomy, death-loving humans into the false belief that death ends in that realm of the dead defined so darkly by the grey, stony, eternal and intransigent monstrosity which is Stonehenge. Whether they went by river or were carried I care not! They went the wrong way! We are fortunate, are we not, that later hydden saw the light and turned from the valley of death that lies before us, with its tumuli and dank sarsens and chambered graves, towards the stars, the Universe and that much greater symbol of transformation from life to supposed death. I refer, of course, to the White Horse! That is the great journey we embark on from Woodhenge!’

  This was indeed a startling transformation of thought, at least in the minds of his captive audience. For Katherine, raised as she was within sight of the White Horse, it was a revelation to think that the Horse was a positive alternative to the great and mythic but negative edifice that was Stonehenge.

  ‘It is surely not “an” alternative but the alternative!’ she said.

  ‘Exactly so, Katherine, you have grasped the point almost as swiftly as I myself! It tells us that the White Horse is our ultimate destination and in some way holds the clue to the meaning and location of the gem of Winter.’

  Which was all very well to the ever-practical Jack, who was not sure if he grasped the point they were so excitedly making.

  ‘Meanwhile,’ he said prosaically, ‘it is my job to get us all safely to Brum, so quite why we’ve ended up here I don’t know. But there’s a reason for it, no doubt, and here, for the time being, we shall stay. As for returning to the White Horse and Woolstone, where I so recently almost died, I’ve no intention to returning there any time soon!’

  32

  TAKE MY HAND

  Two nights after Erich Bohr’s discovery of the special importance of Woodhenge in Arthur’s research in accessing the Hyddenworld he was woken in the early hours by the soft but persistent thwump-thwump-thwump throb of a helicopter’s rotors. He had been restless anyway, because he had arranged with Reece for a helicopter flight to Woodhenge later that morning. A military presence seemed prudent. He was surprised to hear the departure of a much earlier flight.

  Bohr got up, opened his window wide and listened carefully. He was in time to see a dim silhouette against the night sky rising from the direction of the helipad on the adjacent property and moving over the henge trees and heading south. This was not a flight Reece had mentioned to him. Bohr had already come to the reluctant conclusion that he had him – had them all – under twenty-four-hour surveillance. He now guessed that he had been privy to his night-time discussion with Ingrid about Woodhenge and knew about the dance.

  When he had subsequently explained that he intended to go to the site and to take Ingrid along with him to take notes, Reece had seemed unperturbed. He had even suggested that perhaps there would be no point in going along himself, unless Bohr intended to try to enter the Hyddenworld?

  ‘I doubt I’ll be able to do that,’ said Bohr ambiguously.

  ‘That’s right,’ Reece had replied heavily.

  Bohr was now pretty certain that the dawn flight he had seen was to put in place some kind of observation team at Woodhenge to collect data for Reece’s own use. He did not like the idea but he could see why Reece might think that way and maybe provide extra security and cover – he too had a job to do. Bohr had worked around the military long enough to know that, generally speaking, they were not such good liars as politicians, or even political academics like himself. If there were going to be others on the ground at Woodhenge he needed to know, and the best way to find out was to ask the question straight out.

  Still in his pyjamas and dressing gown, he went to ask Reece if he had sent a flight ahead of his own.

  ‘Sure,’ was the frank, unrepentant, reply. ‘I’ve sent people in ahead of your trip this morning. You got a problem with that, Doctor?’

  ‘It might affect the outcome, having your people crawling all over the place. You could have discussed it.’

  ‘Need to know,’ said Reece bluntly. ‘Have you told me everything you’ve found out?’

  Bohr gazed at him.

  Stags at bay.

  ‘Need to know,’ he replied, with an irony that passed straight over Reece’s head and brought not a flicker of amusement or acknowledgement to his cold eyes.

  Bohr was sure that by the time he got there Reece’s people and their equipment would be discreetly in place, ready to keep an eye on all that happened. Maybe Reece thought he would learn more about Bohr’s real intentions by lying low – either by actually not being there, or being there covertly. Either way, Bohr had no intention of trying to find out anything more, either before they left or on the site itself. No point. In situations like this, the business Reece and his people were in was to stay invisible and Bohr doubted he would spot any of them even if he tried.

  But he was also certain that there was something Reece could not know and that was the one clue that Arthur Foale had let slip about travelling to the Hyddenworld on the single occasion, years before, he had talked about it.

  ‘It’s all about intention, Erich. That’s the trick. To know where you’re going.’

  You dance, Erich told himself now again and again, with a purpose or a destination which is really one a
nd the same thing. And anyway, it isn’t a dance exactly, it’s just . . . a few steps.

  The thwumping throb from the helicopter that woke Bohr did the same to Jack thirty-five minutes later.

  Katherine was asleep to his right and she stirred at his touch. Stort, always a heavy sleeper, lay further off and showed no sign of waking.

  ‘What is it?’ whispered Katherine.

  ‘Humans are coming. I think that whatever it is we’re meant to be waiting for here is now beginning to happen. I’ll go and find out what they’re up to. Only wake Stort if you have to; we’re less likely to be seen if he stays still.’

  Jack stayed on the far side of the river from the henge until he was certain that the approaching helicopter was going to land. Predictably, for a flight arriving at that site, it dropped down right in the centre of the space defined by the Durrington ramparts.

  He got within reach of it in under a minute. It carried no external lights but he was near enough that when its side door was opened he could see the interior lights of cabin and flight-deck. The engine did not stop as four military men jumped onto the grass, each with a backpack. The Huey flew off at once.

  The men moved fast, black shapes across the frosted ground, and went straight towards the henge. Jack was careful to keep a close eye on all four as they moved quickly and purposefully into what looked like pre-arranged positions. They seemed unaware they were being observed, Jack instinctively using the steep, east side of a rampart whose broken, rucked-up sward offered perfect cover. They walked single file across the grass, using each other’s footprints in the frost until they reached the road between the walls and the henge.

  Two of the men went and established themselves in a small group of trees a hundred yards from the henge. They faced towards it, meaning that their backs were to Jack’s campsite two hundred yards away. The two others walked past the henge to the few trees that formed its southern boundary and established themselves there. Jack watched with interest as they set up cameras and some tiny directional microphones. It was done very fast and in total silence. Long before the sun rose the site looked deserted once more with only Jack to know who was there and where they were.

  By then, Jack had returned to their camp.

  ‘They’re obviously expecting someone,’ he said.

  ‘You sleep,’ said Katherine, ‘and I’ll take the watch. I’ll wake you when I need to.’

  That moment came two hours later when she heard the throb of the helicopter approaching once again.

  Erich Bohr and Ingrid Hansen arrived just after nine in the same Huey as the covert force had done earlier and, though they did not immediately know it, in the same place.

  Three of the six marines accompanying them climbed out before the rest, explaining they needed to secure the ground. They set off towards the henge and obliterated the prints made by the earlier contingent. When Bohr and Hansen got out they stood in pale sunlight, the whole area shining with frost and cold, stamping their feet and hitting their gloved hands together.

  ‘Hardly dancing weather,’ said Bohr, turning round slowly, eyeing the landscape near and far. He saw evidence of neither marines nor anyone else having visited the site but then he didn’t expect to. Certainly no sign of Reece, who had not accompanied them.

  Bohr’s earlier excitement was replaced by an initial disappointment with the site itself. The so-called Durrington Walls were low earth mounds topped to the north-west by ordinary housing. The post-holes of the henge just south of the site had been picked out by dull-looking concrete posts, dozens of them.

  ‘Over a hundred and thirty in all, apparently,’ said Ingrid.

  Bohr’s conviction earlier that morning that their attempt to enter the henge portal might succeed, now waned. Standing there, the noise of the helicopter still reverberating in his ears and a combined security and communication team setting up positions, robbed the site of any sense of the past.

  Why they were repeating the exercise, assuming a covert team was already in place, he could not imagine. This might be a prehistoric site, but with modern technology and military all over the place and with houses to one side, a road passing through and a car park with an information board for the public, it was hard to see it as such. The idea of ‘dancing’ the henge seemed absurd.

  Yet, as Bohr stood there, unsure at first how to approach the place, he had to admit it held a certain power in a grim, strange way.

  ‘Er . . . in which direction is Stonehenge?’ wondered Ingrid.

  ‘You have the file and the map,’ he replied tersely. ‘Work it out.’

  She took his irritation calmly, glad to be given clear directions. As she stood there orientating the map to what she could see around her, Bohr walked slowly to the henge itself, ordering the marines to move back and give him space. Ingrid Hansen joined him and they worked out the map’s orientation together.

  ‘It’s quite . . . spiritual,’ she said, to his surprise.

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Um . . . well . . . yes . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ he said more gently, annoyed at himself for denying what he was also beginning to feel, ‘yes I think maybe it is.’

  They approached nearer and suddenly it was, strongly so. The posts’ interlocking concentric patterns pulling at his mind like thorny undergrowth, catching his clothes and bare skin, some behind and some to one side, impeding forward movement, inviting the half-turn, the disconnection . . . the dance.

  ‘Maybe we should just try to see where to start . . .’ he said, breaking the spell, or trying to.

  Maybe we should be rational and scientific about this.

  Or maybe we should not.

  ‘I’ve found the starting point,’ she said, looking at the sheet she had printed off and, again to his surprise, she reached a hand, half laughing, half embarrassed, for his.

  ‘Ah, yes, right!’ he said, aware of the troops looking, aware of his awkward body, of his feet, of the damn concrete posts. Aware of being overweight.

  They took a few steps, Ingrid in the lead, until she stopped, dropped his hand and pored over the plan.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  The posts spiralled about him and he was glad she was taking charge, because the place made him feel dizzy and out of control. He turned and turned again, right where he stood, the sun in his eyes and then out of them, then in again.

  ‘Here! Sir . . . oops, I mean Erich!’

  Her voice light, her hand offering itself, ‘I think maybe if we . . . yes you follow . . . that’s right . . . I mean . . . um . . . ooo . . . ow!’

  She banged a shin on one of the posts, a blue one, and sat down to rub it. She was laughing. She was transformed. She was his partner in dance and the marines were stiffening, watching, taking steps closer. It felt as if something was swirling round and round them.

  ‘Let’s try again,’ he said, and this time he took her hand, led her back to where they had just started from, and began once more.

  ‘Come on . . . yes . . . on . . .’

  A wind which wasn’t there before, nor surely had been earlier, whirled a tiny tornado of ice crystals towards them from the north-west end of the Durrington Walls, a few inches off the ground.

  Jack saw it, watching closely as he was, Katherine to one side and Stort the other. Watching the two humans in the henge and the two marines lying amongst trees much nearer.

  ‘Look!’ whispered Jack pointing towards the minuscule swirl of white that showed the wind. ‘Look!’

  At his insistence they had packed their ’sacs and had them on, ready to move fast if they needed to. He and Katherine had their crossbows set, loose at their belts along with their dirks. Stort was ready for a quick exit too, having picked up the same edgy, fragile feel of the day and the way the humans were, stiff as stones but for the two in the henge.

  ‘The wind’s getting up,’ growled Jack, ‘and those humans, what are they doing?’

  ‘Messing about,’ muttered Stort, ‘which is not good in a heng
e, especially that one. Mirror knows where you’d end up!’

  ‘They’re not messing about,’ said Katherine with a mixture of astonishment and alarm, ‘they’re trying to dance the portal!’

  They all watched, stunned. It was true: the two humans, hand in hand, who had seemed so awkward at first, so humanish inside the henge, were dancing free now, turning the step, leaning the slant and going dexter as they should except, except.

  ‘Except they’re doing it wrong,’ said Stort.

  The wind was whirling and swirling snow in its wake, rushing about, cracking the scene open, and the marines, up and alarmed, the two before them who had been so still, now restive, visible, forgetting themselves and the wind so strong up and down the walls and across Durrington way, stirring the blades of the helicopter, shaking the machine, and dry grass flattening right across the site, and yet where men stood, where they lay, nothing but cold, terrible cold.

  ‘See that wind,’ said Katherine, her own voice beginning to shriek as if against its sound, which they could see but not hear, which is impossible, except it was happening like that, it was.

  ‘Everything’s stirring,’ said Stort, and it was, it was, the wind fractiously cutting the air into shards of cold that swirled above them all, threatening to come down, and ice dust combining to sharp points that flew like thin, invisible, shrapnel at them now, at their hands and eyes, their cheeks.

  The marines were turned and turned again, discipline leaving them all but for the nearest two in front and those other two beyond the henge rising now, making themselves seen.

  ‘Ingrid I cannot I cannot I cannot . . .’

  Bohr whirled in his dance, almost there but lost at the last moment and she too, her hand in his, impossible to part, locked in a fall from the sky which was filled with ice, cold cold ice, and they heading where they did not want to go.