The Rings of Poseidon (10 page)

In the morning, when we found him, I looked
through his leather bag and found the ring. I do not know what
attraction it had for him, but I resolved to have no more to do
with it. I had not meant to kill the traveller. The ring seemed
evil somehow.

When Spring softened the weather again I had
a copy of the amulet's design carved on a holy stone from the
seashore and then put both the ring and the amulet in a leather
bag. A woman was going as priestess to a village in the far north.
I gave the bag to her and she left with her escort. I gave the ring
no further thought, 'till now.

Now I have seen at least forty-five summers.
It may be forty-eight or even fifty, I'm not sure. But I have worn
the ring and sent it north. This safe amulet on a holy stone I will
pass to a successor soon. I have ruled this temple for at least
twenty-five summers, and held the office of high priestess longer
than anyone else that can be remembered. All of my contemporaries
have died and I shall not be sorry now when my time is up. Faya is
priestess to a thriving village a week's ride from here, so I see
her but little now. She lives with a good man and I have two
grandchildren. Probably she will ride over to see me in the Spring
if I live 'till then. Still, the will of the Goddess be done, as
ever.

Chapter 8

"Well?" Steve asked at length, "What did you
make of that?"

The question was directed mainly at Frank,
who replied carefully, thinking about his words.

"I'd say 'experience' was a good word to
describe it. Nice and neutral and non-committal. I thought it was
Gill's story not yours though."

"Oh it was. A completely different
'experience' from last time, for me anyway."

"And for me!" echoed a bemused Gill
faintly.

"That's because you were wearing the ring not
Steve." Manjy was wide eyed with a combination of awe, surprise and
a little fear. "I told you it was reincarnation and that the ring
was responsible," she continued, "and I'm sure it is, even if I
can't tell you how."

"Well the story was interesting and
believable, but I can't see how we can prove it or disprove it
without digging forever," said Frank. "Even the bit about Gaïn
being buried inside a temple is an incredibly long shot. If Gill
can give us a lot more detail about the temple we could possibly
identify it, but the odds are against it."

Alicia shook herself. "Oh no," she said, "a
child of about three with a split skull was dug up at Woodhenge.
She'd been buried just inside the entrance. What's more Woodhenge
probably did look more or less as Gill described the temple in her
story. The trouble is, Gill may have known all that. She has a
degree in the History of Bronze Age Britain. Although this was the
Stone Age she'd have known pretty well all the details she gave us
in her story."

"Are you suggesting that I made it all
up?"

"No, no," said Alicia hastily, "I only meant
that evidence in the scientific sense is hard to come by because of
your background, not because of the difficulty of archaeological
verification, as Frank suggested."

"Funny thing though," said Gill. "I felt the
need to explain the concept of "ring". Almost as if it was a new
idea."

"That's fairly easy to explain. Rings are
generally made of metal and this was the Stone Age," said
Alicia.

"So where did a metal ring come from in the
stone age?" asked Frank. "Oh, and what on earth is a 'holy
stone'?"

Alicia said distantly, "The tides smoothing
and wearing away pebbles on a shingle beach sometimes make holes in
them, if the geological structure of the pebble is right. Not that
common but not exactly rare either. By a sort of old medieval joke
a stone with a hole in it was a holy stone, though I don't suppose
the same pun worked all that time ago. I imagine the words were
quite different in whatever language they spoke in stone age
England. All the same, pebbles like that were valued as special and
were probably strung on a thong as an amulet."

"Anyway," Frank continued, "We know how the
ring found its way here. Not in detail of course. We don't know
whether the priestess gave it to a village chief or if he just took
it, but we know why it went."

"I'm not sure we do." said Gill. "I don't
understand why I sent the ring away after one little incident."

"Explains the source of carving that pattern
on stone though," remarked Alicia.

"You don't understand. I really believed the
ring was evil and I understood instantly that the traveller was
looking for it. Why?" Gill was now sounding rather upset.

"Gill seems to believe her story," said
Manjy.

"I don't know what we can do to prove
anything about either story, whatever we think the experience was,"
said Frank.

Steve was very thoughtful. "There is one
thing that would help us know how we stood with the first story."
he said.

"What's that?" Frank wanted to know.

"Well ... if the first story is correct
there's a hand holding a sword somewhere close to the entrance to
the village. If it is there I don't suppose it's in a very good
condition now, but I shouldn't think the owner came back for it."
There was some nervous laughter in response to Steve's attempt to
lighten the situation.

"Well, we'll certainly be digging around the
entrance," said Alicia , "so if it's there, we'll find it."

"I don't know whether to hope it's there or
hope it's not," returned Steve, leaning across the table and
studying the ring which Gill had taken off and put down.

"Why's that?"

"If it's not there we'll dismiss our
experience as an interesting and colourful dream which will fade in
importance as the job in hand progresses. That would be a little
sad but easiest on the brain. But what does it mean if we find the
hand? What do we make of our experience then?" He paused, then
added, "and how much of the rest of the stories can we accept?"

There was an uncomfortable silence as they
all thought over what Steve had said. "You've got a point," said
Alicia at length, "What would it mean?"

Frank thought, on reflection, that point was
academic. "Let's dig up the arm first and worry about what it means
if we do find it.."

Gill voiced something that had been worrying
Alicia. "What was a copper ring doing in my story?" she asked them.
"If we were back in the stone age, why was there a metal ring .
Where and how was it made? How did it get to southern England - the
area that's now Wiltshire, if I really dreamed Woodhenge? All we
know is why I sent it north." She paused for moment and then added,
"And I don't even really know why I did that."

Alicia was going to mention her own doubts
about the whole thing when Frank interrupted her.

"Forget the detail we can't check for now and
stick to what we can check," he said. "It won't take us long to dig
around the entrance. We can do it in a couple of hours." He turned
to Steve. "When you chopped off this guy's sword arm, where were
you standing?"

"Just a minute," protested Steve, "I didn't
cut off anyone's hand."

"You know what I mean. Where were you in the
story?"

"Well, as I recall, the bloke was right
handed and he hadn't even had time to straighten up after he came
out of the village. I'd say the hand would be close to the wall,
just to the left of the entrance as you face it."

"OK, we dig there first thing in the morning.
We were probably going to clear that area anyway, if I read the
boss correctly."

"Hmm? Oh, yes," said Alicia, who wasn't
thinking of herself as the boss just at that moment.

"So, if you don't mind, we'll do that next,"
said Frank.

"Mind? I don't mind. I'm as curious as you,"
Alicia said, and laughed a little, as though, perhaps, she didn't
find it entirely funny.

Frank yawned and said he would turn in early
that night. "I'll put the kettle on for a last drink," said Steve
getting up, "but you won't be so early because it's ten thirty
already."

"Good grief!" said Alicia, glancing at her
watch, "I'd no idea it was so late. Time flies."

* * *

There was an air of expectancy and enthusiasm
over the camp at breakfast next morning and the local workers
arrived early. The ground was still wet after the rain, but the
rain itself seemed to have moved on. Just a few clouds still
threatened the odd shower. Alan and the local gang wanted to get
back to the investigation of 'their house', the crew generally were
hopeful of making more finds and Gill, Frank and Manjy all wanted
to look for the 'hand' from Steve's story. Steve would have liked
to join them from the start but he had various routine jobs to do
first. He hurried through checking the vehicles and topping up the
generator fuel tank, before he left to meet the ferry.

Alicia split them into four teams again. Alan
Wainwright and two of the local men went on excavating the first
house, several volunteers were digging along the route of the
passageway in search of the next house and Alicia took Manjy and
another of the volunteers to help her move and lay out the bones
from the entrance to the village.

"You can take charge of those uncovering the
passageway once you finish here," said Alicia, "but this job calls
for a certain amount of skill."

Frank and Gill both wanted to dig for the
hand and, as they clearly weren't going to concentrate on anything
else, Alicia let them, though using two of the University
specialists together was possibly not the best use of her
resources.

Manjy helped move the bones and lay them out
on a sheet of plywood, while Gill, Frank and the two girls who had
been part of Gill's team the day before stood waiting for them to
get out of the way. "Well," said Alicia, "these look like the
remains of a small but fully grown adult."

"Is that flake of rust a spearhead?" asked
Frank.

Alicia followed the direction of his pointing
finger. "It certainly could be." she said, and bent down to pick it
up.

"Steve's early," observed Manjy watching the
Landrover turn out of the field. "We've only just started and he's
off already."

"I expect he's hoping to be back here by the
time we find the hand," said Gill.

"If we find it," Frank corrected her. "We
aren't sure that it's here to be found at all."

"Whether the hand's here or not, Steve can't
hurry the ferry, can he?" said Alicia, scrambling out of the
trench. "It's not likely to be early just because he is. Anyway,
this does look like a spearhead. Mind you, that in itself doesn't
make Steve's story any more or less likely. What it does do is hint
at violence in the destruction of the village."

She put the spearhead, if that's what it was,
on the board and added, "Come on you two, we'll move these remains
and see if they have anything to tell us."

"OK," Frank told the two volunteers, "Go down
another six to twelve inches where the body was and sift carefully
for anything - weapons, buttons, buckles, ornaments - absolutely
anything." He turned to Gill. "You and I are going to find that
hand if it's there to be found," and he sank his spade through the
tufty grass and into the sandy soil beneath.

* * *

By the time the Landrover turned back into
the field there was a small pile of oddments turned up by the
volunteers, but Gill and Frank's digging had drawn a complete
blank. The latter threw down his shovel and sat at the bottom of
the trench, leaning against the side. "I've got to take a break,"
he said.

"I'm sure it's here somewhere," insisted
Gill, "we've even found his sword with an enormous nick in it."

"We didn't find anything. They," and he
nodded towards the volunteers, "found the sword, though I'll grant
you it's a hell of a nick. Mind you, bronze nicks pretty easy.
Anyway, we've dug carefully and we haven't found a thing. You can't
even tell what's been dug before in this sandy soil."

"I thought it was all artificial," said Gill.
"Hello, what's this?" She bent down. "Nope. Just a pebble. As I was
saying, I thought they built all the houses and then threw up
enough soil to make an artificial hill so that the entire village
was underground."

"That's the way Alicia tells it."

"In that case most of this hill goes back to
when the village was first built."

"So?"

"So either the hand in Steve's story is in
the entranceway or it will be lying pretty close to the
surface."

Frank thought about this for a moment. "That
makes a lot of sense. We probably have been digging in the wrong
place." He got up slowly, dusting the sand off his jeans. "We're
going to have to shift the sand a foot or two into the passageway.
I suppose I'll make a start."

By the time Steve had finished his other jobs
and had time to spare to cross the field, Frank had taken a break
while Gill dug and then taken over again, but there was still no
sign of the hand.

"Found it?" Steve as soon as he was within
earshot.

Frank emerged from the passageway. "No sign,"
he said, "I don't think it's there."

"Where exactly was the bloke standing in your
story?" asked Gill.

"He'd just come out of the village."

"Show us," she said.

Steve jumped down into the trench and Frank
got out of his way as he backed into the passage. The two
volunteers watched curiously.

"He came out bent very low like this," Steve
said, showing them. "And put his hands on the grass to support
himself as he straightened up, like this." Steve put his hand on
the ground beside the trench, moving some loose sand piled at the
side as he did so.

Gill hit her forehead with the heel of her
hand. "We've been digging in the wrong place. It's probably about
six inches or so down and underneath the sand we piled up." She
started moving the excavated sand.