For the henge was perfect: on Midsummer Day, the summer solstice, the sun rose over the horizon exactly opposite the entrance and sent its first crimson flash straight along the avenue, between the stones at the gateway and into the centre of the circle. At the winter solstice, the sun set in exactly the opposite direction, so that its last rays sent their parting glow over the bluestones and along the great ceremonial way. At the henge, using wooden markers as the sun progressed round the heavens, the priests kept tally of the days and ordered the calendar; they calculated the dates of the solstice and the equinox, they regulated the times for sowing and for harvesting and all the other observances listed in the sacred sayings of the priests. The henge was their gigantic sundial that told the days of the year.
Over the henge, Dluc knew, and over all Sarum, the sun god presided. His brooding presence lay over the high ground and over the valleys. In the morning and in the evening when his powerful rays struck the bare ridges round the place where the five rivers met, and threw huge shadows across the bowl of land, every man knew that the sun was watching him. At midday, his awful light blasted the dry chalk so that it hurt the eyes to look at it. Sun gave day and night, summer and winter, spring and harvest: the sun gave – and the sun took away: the sun was absolute.
As the priests scurried about, Dluc moved slowly from one of the pointed sticks to another, unrolling his ball of twine and pausing occasionally to check a sighting line. At such times, in the quiet of the temple, his intellectual, ascetic nature could break free from the troubles that beset the land. With only the deferential priests and the silent bluestones for company, Dluc made his abstruse measurements and calculations in his lonely effort to solve the greatest of all the mysteries of the heavens.
The interruption came in the form of two swift-footed runners, who carried between them an empty litter. They moved across the sacred ground with remarkable speed, their bare, hardened feet making a hiss as they left their prints in the dew.
When they arrived at the henge, they came quickly to the entrance of the sanctum where they prostrated themselves. One of the young priests pointed them out to the High Priest. Dluc frowned.
“What is the meaning of this interruption?”
“It is Krona, High Priest,” they answered without looking up – for it was an offence for a servant to look at the High Priest. “He sends for you.”
“Before dawn?” He glared at them. Then a thought struck him. “Is he sick?”
The two men hesitated.
“We do not know,” the older of them said, “but he is very angry,” he added, and his companion nodded emphatically.
Dluc suppressed a sigh.
“I will come.”
Indicating to the priest that they were to sacrifice the young criminal lying near his feet as soon as the sun rose, he stepped into the waiting litter.
They carried him at a smooth, rapid run and the seven miles over the high ground to the place where the five rivers met was soon covered. For this was the heart of Sarum and the residence of the great chief Krona.
Since time out of mind, the family of the chief had ruled at Sarum. Claiming direct descent from the legendary Krona the Warrior whose long barrow on the high ground was still venerated, a list of no less than eighty generations of the family had been ceremoniously recited by the priests when the last chief’s reign had been inaugurated. To emphasise the continuity of their rule, each chief took the same name – Krona – on his succession, and the office of High Priest was usually also occupied by some other member of the family. This was the case now, for Dluc was the chief’s half brother.
When Dluc arrived, the moon was still high, bathing the place in light. It was a fine sight, calculated to impress. The tops of the horseshoe of ridges overlooking the bowl of land had been scraped bare and along them stretched a line of palisades, manned by Krona’s guards. As the visitor approaching along the river looked upward, this was the skyline that greeted him, a bleak reminder that at Sarum the power of the chief was absolute. In the centre of the horseshoe, on the summit of the hill that guarded the valley entrance, stood his house: a large wooden structure daubed white and surrounded by an outer wall which was coloured red. It stared out impassively over the tops of the trees below. Inside the wall was a series of courtyards and store houses, as well as the quarters of Krona himself.
In the valley below the hill was a small trading post through which all the goods that passed along the five rivers or down to the harbour in the south must pass: for trade, like every other activity at Sarum, was regulated by the chief.
As he looked out at this scene, Dluc’s gaunt face softened into a half smile. “Sarum the fortunate,” he murmured to himself, remembering better times.
The five rivers had always been the centre of Sarum’s power; but now the powerful Krona’s rule extended over large tracts of land in all directions. To the south, he controlled the river all the way to the harbour; to the north, all the sacred grounds and beyond; to east and west his rule extended for nearly twenty miles. No territory on the island was richer or better placed. The traders from the north brought marvellous axes of polished stone; from the east fine pottery; gold, intricately worked, came from the magician artisans of Ireland; amber, jet, pearls and all manner of wonders came through the harbour from distant lands. The people were rich: the brown sheep grazed for a day’s journey along the ridges. Fields of wheat, flax and barley covered the slopes; the valleys were full of cattle and pigs. In the woods, trappers found pelts to sell downriver and Krona hunted his deer and his wild boar.
There were nearly three thousand souls in this territory, which had never been conquered. And for generations, all over the island it had been said:
“No chief is greater than Krona; no family more noble than his, which rules over Sarum the fortunate.”
Sarum the fortunate. Was it still blessed? Would the gods still smile upon it? These were the questions that now occupied Dluc’s mind as he was carried into the house on the hill.
Three torches on wooden tripods were burning in the little enclosure in front of the chiefs quarters. On the wall, on the thatched roof, over the door, hung scores of antlers, horns and boars’ heads, the trophies of Krona’s many hunting expeditions – for the magnificent hunts and lavish entertainments of the chief had been renowned far across the islands, until recently.
Without hesitation, the tall priest swept in through the doorway.
Inside, the wax tapers were lit. A servant stood trembling by the entrance, and fell to the ground as soon as he saw Dluc appear.
“Where is Krona?” the priest demanded.
“In the inner room.”
He strode on.
The inner room was a smaller chamber separated from the room by a heavy curtain, and it was here that Krona slept. Dluc brushed the curtain aside.
Only a single taper lit the room, and for a moment Dluc had to pause, to accustom his eyes to the shadows.
Near him, kneeling on the floor, her body doubled up and shaking with fear, was a girl whom he recognised as a farmer’s daughter he had sent to Krona the month before, the latest in the series of new wives that the great chief had recently taken. She was a plump creature of fifteen with a wide, inviting mouth, soft young breasts and broad hips made for child bearing. He frowned to see her in such an attitude. The chief had seemed pleased with her a few days before.
Then he saw Krona.
In recent months, since the tragedy that now threatened the survival of Sarum, the chief had changed dramatically. His commanding eyes had become sunken, his huge, manly form had grown thinner, and his shoulders had begun to stoop, as though under the weight of a great burden. His full, flowing black beard was now streaked with grey. But despite his troubles, nothing had altered the noble bearing of Sarum’s chief.
Krona was standing in the far corner of the room, in front of the large couch covered with furs on which he normally slept. He was half hidden in the shadows. Beside him, on the floor, the priest could make out the form of Ina, his senior wife; she had been with him since he was little more than a boy, and though she was starting to grow old now, he knew that the powerful chief was devoted to her. As his eyes became accustomed to the shadow, the priest saw that something had taken place within Krona’s spirit. His shoulders were hunched in anger and misery; his face was haggard. His nose, always aquiline, now seemed to curve down like a great beak; and his sunken eyes had in them a look of wildness that Dluc had never seen before. He was motionless: he looked like a huge, ominous bird of prey.
“I have come,” Dluc said softly.
For several moments Krona did not speak. When he did at last, his voice was little more than a hoarse whisper.
“She has taken away my manhood.” He pointed at the girl crouching on the floor.
Dluc glanced down at her.
“Take her,” the chief went on. “Sacrifice her to the sun god, High Priest, so that I can be a man again.”
Dluc considered. The human sacrifices at the temple were regulated by strict customs. Only criminals, or those chosen by the priests on the most important festivals were killed. The High Priest did not sacrifice a girl without reason, even if Krona himself wanted it.
The priest shook his head.
“Do you understand?” Krona hissed from his corner, “she has taken my manhood. I can do nothing.”
“I have many cures for impotence. A potion will restore you,” Dluc replied calmly.
Krona shook his head. His eyes stared at the priest angrily. Then, slowly, he slid down and sat on the couch.
“No potions,” he said wearily.
Now Ina moved closer to him. His faithful companion for many years, she had carefully supervised each of the new wives, instructing them how to please him, watched over them and advised them. She touched the chiefs leg lightly with her hand and stroked it softly, trying to calm him. Then, slowly and very gently, with her greying hair falling forward over her face, she leaned over and, stretching out her arms she took her husband’s face between her hands and kissed him gently on the lips.
Dluc watched, admiring not for the first time, the love of this dutiful woman for the great chief.
He saw her head slowly drawing back, saw her look up with a hopeful smile into Krona’s haggard face, and then resume her task, gently persuading, before finally touching her husband affectionately on his leg and returning to her position at his feet. She looked up at Dluc with sadness in her eyes and shook her head.
“No potions,” the chief repeated. “Give the girl to the gods, or there will be no heirs for the house of Krona.”
Dluc sighed. For this was the problem that threatened Sarum with destruction.
It had been news of the arrival of a merchant ship from a distant country that had caused the party to go down river to the harbour, and Dluc had looked forward to the journey, both because the harbour with its low, sheltering hill, its herons and pelicans always gave him pleasure, and also because he liked to question the sailors about the wonders they had seen on their voyage.
The journey had begun well, a large party travelling in ten of the big canoes with their brightly painted skins; Krona sat with his two sons, magnificent in a crimson robe, in the first, as they skimmed down the river which was at its lowest level in the midsummer heat. Everywhere there was a heavy smell of grass, riverweed and mud.
In mid-afternoon they entered the long still stretch of harbour water and at once they saw the merchants’ boat, moored by the trading post on the south side of the harbour.
It was a remarkable vessel. The traders who came from along the coast or across the sea from the mainland to the south used curraghs: boats of skin stretched over wooden frames, similar to the river canoes except that they were broader and had deeper draughts. The merchant sailors rowed these boats although sometimes, when the wind was in the right quarter, they would raise a small sail on a pole to aid the oarsmen. But this new vessel was twice the size of any curragh that Dluc had seen before, and not only its frame, but its sides, too, were made of wood, the planks neatly joined one to another and sealed with pitch. In the centre was a thick mast, secured into the spine of the craft below, and rolled on a crossbeam was a large, square leather sail. At the back of this amazing vessel was a huge rudder which both steered the boat and stabilised it so thoroughly that although the sailors had oars, the master mariner could, by using the sail and rudder together, drive the vessel forward, even when the wind was not directly behind it. There were no craftsmen on the island who could build such a vessel.
The mariners in the ship were short, stocky, roundheaded men with wide cheekbones, olive skins and dark curly beards that seemed to have been oiled, for they gleamed in the sunlight. They spoke a strange language, but they had brought with them a merchant from the mainland who could interpret for them.
Their cargo was impressive: huge vessels of wine, which the islanders had not tasted before; lengths of linen, encrusted with precious beads and stones; amber, which the islanders knew how to work; huge pearls; and magnificent jewellery.