Chapter 26: The Hollow Hill
The street was empty now of the tourist cars that had lined it earlier, and a sense of calm had descended within the circle. Conall stood for a moment at the junction of Church Street, fighting the urge to walk down to the cottage and see if Shen was in. He’d be seeing her later, he reasoned, and besides, what if Hayden had decided to come back after his shift? Despite telling himself he was okay with the situation, a wave of emptiness in his stomach showed him that this wasn’t really the case.
The strange twisted feeling inside strengthened his resolve to continue, as planned, to the Red Lion.
Shenandoah! He hadn’t been able to get her out of his thoughts this day. He had allowed himself to think of her more than he should have – it was like a good pain – like scratching an itch or a chilblain – pleasurable but painful at the same time.
He had gone back to his van and dozed for a while after visiting the Longbarrow, but Shen had crowded into his thoughts and he had allowed himself the unimaginable – to remember in detail, despite having repressed the thought for so long, the events of that day the previous May when he’d walked with her to the Swallowhead spring and they’d sat on the stones in the stream and paddled their feet in the icy water.
...
The sight of her little white feet moving hither and thither in the brook had made him feel both strangely happy and weak at the same time; he’d longed for their feet to touch, but he hadn’t dared move closer to her; she had turned her head to one side and looked at him with an expression of curiosity and amusement which he’d not been able to read. Still her feet, small and delicate like a child’s, moved slowly, stirring clouds of chalk from the bottom of the stream. She seemed to be waiting for him to do something but a few moments passed and others had come and crossed the stones, and so they had continued up towards West Kennet with a silence between them and a growing tension, fuelled by unspoken and un-acted upon desire. The ground was covered in clover, and he wished he hadn’t put his boots back on – he longed to feel the earth under his bare feet, to feel connected to the being on which they trod, that fed them, and had ultimately brought them into being.
On the banks of the barrow they had sat, catching their breath under the warm sun; he had lain beside her in the long grass, the skylarks tumbling above them, as his heart beat wildly and his mouth became dry, and he wished he had the courage to do or say something – yet he lay there in a maddening state of torpor until she had smiled and said, simply, ‘You can kiss me, you know.’
He had smiled and refused, saying if he kissed her now she’d never know whether he’d done it because she had asked or because he had wanted to, to which she laughed, agreeing – but she had given him the go ahead, and the nervousness he had felt, which had been founded on doubt that she felt anything like the same as him, dissolved. And so a few minutes later, as she lay with her eyes closed against the high afternoon sun he leant over her, and brushed her mouth with his, his chest pounding with anxiety and happiness; and with a trembling hand he stroked her soft cheek. He had kissed her again, her hair in the breeze ticking the side of his face – he pulled back to move it aside, and she had said that it was annoying; ‘No, it’s beautiful’ he had replied.
After a while she had stroked his hair and then turned and lent on her elbows, and had pulled her bag towards her, telling Con she had something for him.
‘I found this yesterday when I was walking back from Silbury. I thought I might give it to you.’
It was a cream coloured feather with smudges of chocolate brown along the edge of one side - an owl’s feather. He took it in his hands and twirled it about, then had stroked her cheek with it and placed it in her hair, smiling.
‘Thank you’ he had said, ‘you look like one of your ancestors.’ and had held her gaze; different now that the tension had gone and he could look at her fully, still scared a little, still nervous of this beautiful woman; how lovely it had been to look into those chocolate eyes, that sometimes seemed almost black, sometimes amber; but now in the sunlight were like pale autumn leaves; and the joy he felt when they closed as she had moved towards him and kissed him again; a gentle brushing of the lips, no more, and his hand holding her hair against her cheek.
...
Such joy and promise – that it should have come to nothing; that it should have been tainted by his folly. That he should lose her; and find her again but too late, as she was with another; another for whom she would close her lovely eyes when they kissed…
The knot in the stomach was like a knife.
The beer was cold and he took a few large gulps then carried it to his usual chair beside the window. Taking his notebook from his jacket pocket he opened it on the notes he’d made earlier that afternoon from a letter of Tolkien’s, now safely ensconced in his camper.
He’d not written out all of the letter – just the salient parts – the things he’d puzzled over; here, again, was a mention of the Kennet, but related to an old poem he’d not heard of before ‘The Pearl’ – but the imagery of which had sent shivers through him, with its talk of loss, and of the hope of finding again, in some future, those who had departed this world.
That image of stones glimmering like shining stars in the stream…
It had been the October before she died.
Melissa and her husband had bought an old cottage on the North Welsh hills above the River Ogwen, a few minutes’ drive out of Bangor where Melissa had begun to study for a degree in Celtic. There had been room in the house to stay but Conall had chosen to stay in the caravan in the garden – partly so he didn’t have to live under the same roof as that prick Anthony, but partly because here he could see the peaks of the Carneddau mountains; once, when they were turned copper by the setting sun he imagined they were peaks of a vast rising tidal wave, and felt a sudden thrill of panic.
Melissa had seemed happy then; dreamy, even. Anthony still argued and put her down, but she seemed not to rise to it; and one evening, when Anthony had got drunk and fallen asleep, Con and Melissa had driven to a destination she had teased would be something he would absolutely love...
They had crossed Menai bridge and headed south, parallel to the Menai Straits; after ten minutes or so they had turned north-west and had parked in a small lane in flat farmland. The sun had nearly disappeared, but there was enough light to cross the field and take the path beside a small stream. Melissa had called Con to the stream’s edge, and taking off her shoes waded in and lent over, feeling the riverbed for something; smiling, she had come back to the bank with her treasure – a couple of quartz crystals.
‘This river – it’s the Afon Braint – named after a goddess! This is Holy Mother Brigantia, the High One, and look – here are her star-stones!’ she beamed at him.
Con had raised his eyebrows and smiled, watching her wading out of the water, her massed dark curls flopped over her face.
‘You seem happier.’
‘I am. The muse has returned…’ she said, her blue eyes flashing.
‘You’re writing songs again? No wonder Anthony is moody!’
‘Anthony doesn’t know.’ She said, shooting him a serious look that told him that he should not mention any of this to the absent man, who had never encouraged her musical ambitions, though had always been happy to enjoy the money it brought.
She had put her boots back on and lead Con away from the stream towards what appeared to be a low hillock in a field of short grass in a neighbouring field, not far from a number of farm buildings; a herd of cattle eyed them as they approached, lowing nervously. Walking closer, however, Con had soon seen that the mound was ringed by grey stones, set within a perfectly circular bank – and to its north east a stone lined squat doorway, leading into the dark interior of the green belly-like rise of the earth:
‘Bryn Celli Ddu – the mound in the dark grove – the womb of the mother…’ Melissa whispered.
‘Jesus, Mel! I wanted to find this place while I was up here!’
‘You’ve heard of it?’ she asked, surprised.
‘Course. I am doing my PhD on these sites, you know, you twat!’
‘Oh, I thought you were just doing henges…’
‘Yeah…duh!‘ he said, pointing at an information board that stood near the perimeter fence. He gestured at a reconstruction of the building of the mound, with the first image clearly showing the site as a henge with a stone circle, before the later passage-grave, the mound, had been built.
‘Might help if you read these things,’ he said sarcastically, ‘it started as a henge.’
She spun on the spot. ‘I don’t want other people’s ideas crowding out my own,’ she grinned; ‘so, how old is it, Doctor?’
‘Oh, about four thousand years. And it’s aligned on midsummer sunrise.’
‘The passage? How fucking cool! I didn’t know that!’
‘No, they cunningly hide such information in books and on information boards.’ He mock-chided. ‘It is cool, but a bit of a pisser for me…’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m arguing that midwinter was more important date.’ He explained. ‘But it’s a later site, the mound at least, than some of the other sites I’ve looked at, so I’ll let the builders off… Newgrange, in Ireland, is just like Bryn Celli, but it points to the midwinter sunrise…’
Mel was twirling about pointing… ‘So that’s… south-east, yeah?’
Con nodded. ‘Whereas this chamber…’
‘Is north-east…’ she finished. ‘Does it still align? – I mean, I remember you mentioning the stars moving over time?’
‘It still aligns; the stars move, but not the sun, which is why Stonehenge is still aligned on the solstices.’
‘Fuck. Can you remember that solstice at Glasto?’ she laughed. They’d been camping on site the year she’d played – having refused to be put-up elsewhere and flown or driven in. Con had delighted in the kudos of being seen in the company of Mellifluous… but Mel herself had found it increasingly uncomfortable, the constant recognition. They’d gone to the purpose-built stone circle away from the main stages, and got hideously drunk, dancing in the firelight with the crusties to the sound of numerous drums; then some travellers tore down one of the main fences and hundreds broke in before security could stop them, and Con and Mel had gone back to their tents to find they had been broken into and half his stuff nicked. Rock ‘n’ Fucking Roll… bastards…
…
‘We’ll have to come here at midsummer, Con!’ she had cooed, approaching the twilit mound.
Bowing their heads they had gone inside the low passage, feeling their way in the dark, their hands either side on smooth, damp walls; crouching low they had reached an internal chamber, its back side was open to the sky where only half the mound had been reconstructed; originally they would have been at the heart of the mound, earth on all sides, but the modern rebuilding had left half open to lend light to the chamber. At its centre stood a stone the size of a grown man or woman, smooth, like a fossilised trunk of a tree; Melissa had placed her arms around the stone and kissed it.
‘Holy Mother Brigantia!’ she had said, and taking the quartz stones she had gathered from her pocket she had struck the two together – causing a spark – but no ordinary spark – a flash, like lightning within a storm cloud – but from inside the stones rather than outside. She did it again. A smell of acrid burning hit his nostrils.
‘Mother stones… stones of light…. Stars in river of the night…’ she had said. And all the while, the pillar, like Lot’s wife, stood before her, just visible in the half-light of evening. Con looked up through the gap in the chamber; the star Altair shone in the south, below the cross of Cygnus, taking flight through the faint blush of the Milky Way that had just begun to become visible above him, and a paleness to the east heralded the rising of the moon, still hidden behind the trees.
‘This is a palace of the Sidhe; a doorway to the fairy realm; the mother’s blessing, the bendith y mamau dwell here – and have done for all time…I saw a fairy once…’
Con had looked at the ecstatic look on her face. Kooky as ever, he had thought.
‘It wasn’t like Tinkerbell…’ she said, ‘it was in a field near here; it was like the earth, and was dancing in the field, kind of jumping around…somersaulting.’
‘Like the earth?’
‘Earthy, kind of reddish-brown… like one of those bog bodies they’ve found…not small, not tiny, I mean… 4 foot high or so? There’s an Irish folktale I read about, the tale of Selena Moor, where a woman is held captive by the fairies and explains to her human lover that the fairies were star-worshippers who lived long ago… I think they’re the spirits of the people who built these mounds and still dwell here…’.
‘As ghosts?’ Con had asked.
Mel had shrugged. ‘What is a ghost? I think it’s all consciousness on some level… maybe when you die you can become fixed to some part of the land – a tree, or hill, stream, maybe. Maybe you just blend into the consciousness behind everything; so, there’s no difference between ghost, human, spirit, fairy, whatever…’
She opened her blue eyes wide and stood, arms outstretched; the silver and blue dress she’d casually thrown on under a thick crochet cardigan hanging loose like the robe of some ancient priestess.
‘I call thee, beautiful ones, Lordly Ones, that dwell in the hollow hills. Inspire me; give me voice!’ and as she clashed the stones together above her head, causing them to flare, she began to chant, her voice high, ethereal, in words Con couldn’t understand.
‘Dewch Bendith y Mamau; dewch in mewn; I’r fryn yr hen bobl… ellyllon, ellyllon… dw’i’n eisiau bwyta… y pair dadeni…’ she half-sang, in the broken Welsh she was beginning to learn…
He had lit a cigarette and she had frowned, continuing to sing, but ushering him towards the gap in the chamber, wrinkling her nose.
And then the chamber lit up as the lights in the yard of the farm house in the next field went on, and Con and Melissa had stifled laughter, suddenly quiet.
‘That farmer’s going to think he’s heard the fairies!’ Con grinned. Then he frowned - ‘he’s not going to come in here with a gun, is he?’
‘This is Wales, you dick, not the Wild West!’
‘Mel, I’m pleased you’re happier.’ Con had said, when the light had been extinguished and the farmer gone back to the safety of his cottage.
Mel had looked at the floor, smiled and then raised her head.
‘I’m in love, Con.’
He didn’t have to ask if it was someone else – he knew it.
‘But Anthony mustn’t know, not yet. He’d do everything he could to ruin it and I can’t have that. I’m happy, Con! I’ll leave him in time, I just need more time.’
Time. One thing Melissa did not have. Six months later they’d found her face down in that same stream from which she’d plucked the quartz stones that night. Afon Braint. River of the Brigantia; the High One. Anthony had found out about her affair. He’d marched into the University and confronted the new man, a fellow in the Welsh Department – and put the fear of God into him, and threatened all kinds of stuff that had driven him to end it with Mel…
And she’d asked me to come up and help her sort it out and I hadn’t, thought Con.
They had left the mound to find the night scattered with stars; Jupiter was burning low in the south-east, while the moon sailed above the eastern horizon, between the horns of Taurus, bright, on its way to being full; and the three belt-stars of Orion had just appeared above the trees below it.
Mel had stopped Con, and pointed directly overhead ‘the Mother above, and below’ she had said. ‘The River in heaven, and river on earth – that’s Llys Don, court of Danu, the Mother,’ she said, pointing at the W-shaped stars of Cassiopeia; ‘Do you think that’s why they built the tomb here, beside her stream; they saw the stones in the water, the light-giving quartz shining in the dark, and thought they were fallen stars?’
In the depths stood dazzling stones aheap
As a glitter through glass that glowed with light,
As streaming stars when on earth men sleep
Stare in the welkin in winter night’
And she had quietly sung to herself a new song…
I seek for the Mother
To cry no more
to find where her cool white waters rise…
In the depths of the water
To sigh no more
Lie stones fallen from the skies
‘I think they believed that the heavenly river started here… it’s heaven on earth. It’s the crossing point.’
‘It seems familiar, Mel’ he had said; ‘but I can’t put my finger on it. Have we been here before?’
‘I hadn’t til I moved here; I can’t see how you could have.’ She said; as twins they had an almost perfect knowledge of both their shared past, and subsequent travels.
But it was a feeling he couldn’t shake; and a few months later, after Christmas, he discovered, or so he thought, why.
He had been running ancient site alignments through his computer for his PhD. Having dispensed with the solsticial alignments of the main sites like Stonehenge and Avebury, and finding them rarer than he had imagined, he had started to look at other, less well-known sites. And he had begun, out of interest, with Bryn Celli, looking to model the summer solstice sunrise with new computer software he had at hand.
He had phoned her, shaken and excited.
‘Can you remember I said Bryn Celli was familiar? I know why. That dream I had years ago, with the horse and the river, remember?’ She had.
‘That was Bryn Celli?’
‘Yeah. Listen. Remember it as on a sort of henge site that hadn’t been built yet, yeah? And there was a river, with three cows, and beyond the river mountains with a cleft in.’
‘Yep, I do remember. But can you see the mountains from Bryn Celli? I can’t remember…’
‘Now you can’t – but that’s because there’s trees on the hill, but take the trees away… I’ve got this program called Horizon, and I can create a model of any horizon in the UK so I can plot the rising and setting points of the heavenly bodies … anyway – I put in Bryn Celli to find the summer solstice rising point, just to check it works, which it does – but then I looked at the horizon image and there was this massive cleft in the mountains! It’s the bloody Llanberis pass. It’s fucking identical Mel… I’ll email you an image; remember I did that painting after the dream? It’s identical.’
And it was. The vista of Snowdonia from Bryn Celli, with the river between the mound and the mountains, was precisely what he had painted all those years ago.
‘Jesus. That’s spooky, Con. And bloody cool… but what does it mean?!’
‘Oh, it gets waaay cooler,’ he said, laughing. ‘I looked at the alignment of the Llanberis pass – and from the site of Bryn Celli it marks the exact rising point of the midwinter sunrise.’
Mel had gone quiet.
‘I think,’ Con continued, ‘that they built the site there because it marked the point from which the midwinter sun could be seen rising from between the two highest peaks in Snowdonia; it can’t be a coincidence… Why the fuck did I dream it? And what does the river turning to milk mean?’
Mel spoke up – ‘if it’s the Braint, then the goddess in your dream must have been Brigantia.’
‘I suppose so, but why did I go into the water? What does it mean, ultimately?’
He didn’t know. But he knew something about the sun…
His research had already uncovered many examples of the imagery of the sun rising or setting between two peaks – in a number of ritual sites such as in Orkney, where the Hills of Hoy framed the setting of the midwinter sun as seen from the Stones of Stenness; it was a common theme; the sun rising out of twin hills was even found in Egyptian and Minoan art. Or the cave from which Amaterasu, the Japanese sun-goddess had been released; the walls of the cave, broken out of the earth… and the silhouette of the mountains as seen from this point on Anglesey was as perfect a rendition of this ancient symbol as one could hope to see…
The night after he had rung her again…
‘Mel, in the Bronze Age the sun was linked to the horse… there’s a bronze chariot from Denmark called the Trundholm sun chariot, and it’s pulling the sun along on, like, a small cart; it’s in Norse myth, too, the sun that bears the sun and moon – and in my dream – I look up at the cleft, get out of the river, and there’s a horse with a moon between it’s brows – it’s like it’s telling me to look at these old mythic images… it was there, 20 years ago, the cleft in the mountains of a site I’d never seen, being link to the astronomical or mythic imagery of the rising of the sun… and now I’m doing my doctorate on this stuff and the dream is coming true…what, Mel, is telling me these things, and why?’
‘So what about the milk in the river?’ she had asked, ‘if the rest is true, then that ought to be, too. Maybe that’ll answer the question, or at least help.’
‘That’s what I need to look at next.’ he had said.
‘Speak to you tomorrow night!’ she had joked, but she didn’t have to wait that long; it was 7 the next morning when he rang her. He hadn’t slept; he had been awake all night, trawling through books, articles and the internet…
And then he told her he’d found it; if not the ‘why’, he had at least found what seemed to be a stunning parallel to the milk in the river image…but now, sitting in the Red Lion a year and a bit later, he wished to god he hadn’t ever looked at it; for what else had put the idea in her head about going back to the river and submerging herself in the water, than his insistence on the magical nature of the dream?
‘I’ve got it, Mel, I’ve found a story that fits the river of milk… like really fits it…a Celtic tale, Irish…’
…
The image from the Pearl poem flashed once more again in his mind’s eye: the gleaming stones in a river that separated this world from paradise; and on its other bank a girl –
Bot the water was depe, I dorst not wade.
But the water was deep, I dared not wade…
Not that deep, he thought, swallowing the last of his now lukewarm beer; mid-shin deep, he recalled; but deep enough to drown in if you have a belly-full of alcohol and a heart heavy with sorrow and a bag full of quartz stones to weigh you down.
The street was empty now of the tourist cars that had lined it earlier, and a sense of calm had descended within the circle. Conall stood for a moment at the junction of Church Street, fighting the urge to walk down to the cottage and see if Shen was in. He’d be seeing her later, he reasoned, and besides, what if Hayden had decided to come back after his shift? Despite telling himself he was okay with the situation, a wave of emptiness in his stomach showed him that this wasn’t really the case.
The strange twisted feeling inside strengthened his resolve to continue, as planned, to the Red Lion.
Shenandoah! He hadn’t been able to get her out of his thoughts this day. He had allowed himself to think of her more than he should have – it was like a good pain – like scratching an itch or a chilblain – pleasurable but painful at the same time.
He had gone back to his van and dozed for a while after visiting the Longbarrow, but Shen had crowded into his thoughts and he had allowed himself the unimaginable – to remember in detail, despite having repressed the thought for so long, the events of that day the previous May when he’d walked with her to the Swallowhead spring and they’d sat on the stones in the stream and paddled their feet in the icy water.
...
The sight of her little white feet moving hither and thither in the brook had made him feel both strangely happy and weak at the same time; he’d longed for their feet to touch, but he hadn’t dared move closer to her; she had turned her head to one side and looked at him with an expression of curiosity and amusement which he’d not been able to read. Still her feet, small and delicate like a child’s, moved slowly, stirring clouds of chalk from the bottom of the stream. She seemed to be waiting for him to do something but a few moments passed and others had come and crossed the stones, and so they had continued up towards West Kennet with a silence between them and a growing tension, fuelled by unspoken and un-acted upon desire. The ground was covered in clover, and he wished he hadn’t put his boots back on – he longed to feel the earth under his bare feet, to feel connected to the being on which they trod, that fed them, and had ultimately brought them into being.
On the banks of the barrow they had sat, catching their breath under the warm sun; he had lain beside her in the long grass, the skylarks tumbling above them, as his heart beat wildly and his mouth became dry, and he wished he had the courage to do or say something – yet he lay there in a maddening state of torpor until she had smiled and said, simply, ‘You can kiss me, you know.’
He had smiled and refused, saying if he kissed her now she’d never know whether he’d done it because she had asked or because he had wanted to, to which she laughed, agreeing – but she had given him the go ahead, and the nervousness he had felt, which had been founded on doubt that she felt anything like the same as him, dissolved. And so a few minutes later, as she lay with her eyes closed against the high afternoon sun he leant over her, and brushed her mouth with his, his chest pounding with anxiety and happiness; and with a trembling hand he stroked her soft cheek. He had kissed her again, her hair in the breeze ticking the side of his face – he pulled back to move it aside, and she had said that it was annoying; ‘No, it’s beautiful’ he had replied.
After a while she had stroked his hair and then turned and lent on her elbows, and had pulled her bag towards her, telling Con she had something for him.
‘I found this yesterday when I was walking back from Silbury. I thought I might give it to you.’
It was a cream coloured feather with smudges of chocolate brown along the edge of one side - an owl’s feather. He took it in his hands and twirled it about, then had stroked her cheek with it and placed it in her hair, smiling.
‘Thank you’ he had said, ‘you look like one of your ancestors.’ and had held her gaze; different now that the tension had gone and he could look at her fully, still scared a little, still nervous of this beautiful woman; how lovely it had been to look into those chocolate eyes, that sometimes seemed almost black, sometimes amber; but now in the sunlight were like pale autumn leaves; and the joy he felt when they closed as she had moved towards him and kissed him again; a gentle brushing of the lips, no more, and his hand holding her hair against her cheek.
...
Such joy and promise – that it should have come to nothing; that it should have been tainted by his folly. That he should lose her; and find her again but too late, as she was with another; another for whom she would close her lovely eyes when they kissed…
The knot in the stomach was like a knife.
The beer was cold and he took a few large gulps then carried it to his usual chair beside the window. Taking his notebook from his jacket pocket he opened it on the notes he’d made earlier that afternoon from a letter of Tolkien’s, now safely ensconced in his camper.
He’d not written out all of the letter – just the salient parts – the things he’d puzzled over; here, again, was a mention of the Kennet, but related to an old poem he’d not heard of before ‘The Pearl’ – but the imagery of which had sent shivers through him, with its talk of loss, and of the hope of finding again, in some future, those who had departed this world.
That image of stones glimmering like shining stars in the stream…
It had been the October before she died.
Melissa and her husband had bought an old cottage on the North Welsh hills above the River Ogwen, a few minutes’ drive out of Bangor where Melissa had begun to study for a degree in Celtic. There had been room in the house to stay but Conall had chosen to stay in the caravan in the garden – partly so he didn’t have to live under the same roof as that prick Anthony, but partly because here he could see the peaks of the Carneddau mountains; once, when they were turned copper by the setting sun he imagined they were peaks of a vast rising tidal wave, and felt a sudden thrill of panic.
Melissa had seemed happy then; dreamy, even. Anthony still argued and put her down, but she seemed not to rise to it; and one evening, when Anthony had got drunk and fallen asleep, Con and Melissa had driven to a destination she had teased would be something he would absolutely love...
They had crossed Menai bridge and headed south, parallel to the Menai Straits; after ten minutes or so they had turned north-west and had parked in a small lane in flat farmland. The sun had nearly disappeared, but there was enough light to cross the field and take the path beside a small stream. Melissa had called Con to the stream’s edge, and taking off her shoes waded in and lent over, feeling the riverbed for something; smiling, she had come back to the bank with her treasure – a couple of quartz crystals.
‘This river – it’s the Afon Braint – named after a goddess! This is Holy Mother Brigantia, the High One, and look – here are her star-stones!’ she beamed at him.
Con had raised his eyebrows and smiled, watching her wading out of the water, her massed dark curls flopped over her face.
‘You seem happier.’
‘I am. The muse has returned…’ she said, her blue eyes flashing.
‘You’re writing songs again? No wonder Anthony is moody!’
‘Anthony doesn’t know.’ She said, shooting him a serious look that told him that he should not mention any of this to the absent man, who had never encouraged her musical ambitions, though had always been happy to enjoy the money it brought.
She had put her boots back on and lead Con away from the stream towards what appeared to be a low hillock in a field of short grass in a neighbouring field, not far from a number of farm buildings; a herd of cattle eyed them as they approached, lowing nervously. Walking closer, however, Con had soon seen that the mound was ringed by grey stones, set within a perfectly circular bank – and to its north east a stone lined squat doorway, leading into the dark interior of the green belly-like rise of the earth:
‘Bryn Celli Ddu – the mound in the dark grove – the womb of the mother…’ Melissa whispered.
‘Jesus, Mel! I wanted to find this place while I was up here!’
‘You’ve heard of it?’ she asked, surprised.
‘Course. I am doing my PhD on these sites, you know, you twat!’
‘Oh, I thought you were just doing henges…’
‘Yeah…duh!‘ he said, pointing at an information board that stood near the perimeter fence. He gestured at a reconstruction of the building of the mound, with the first image clearly showing the site as a henge with a stone circle, before the later passage-grave, the mound, had been built.
‘Might help if you read these things,’ he said sarcastically, ‘it started as a henge.’
She spun on the spot. ‘I don’t want other people’s ideas crowding out my own,’ she grinned; ‘so, how old is it, Doctor?’
‘Oh, about four thousand years. And it’s aligned on midsummer sunrise.’
‘The passage? How fucking cool! I didn’t know that!’
‘No, they cunningly hide such information in books and on information boards.’ He mock-chided. ‘It is cool, but a bit of a pisser for me…’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m arguing that midwinter was more important date.’ He explained. ‘But it’s a later site, the mound at least, than some of the other sites I’ve looked at, so I’ll let the builders off… Newgrange, in Ireland, is just like Bryn Celli, but it points to the midwinter sunrise…’
Mel was twirling about pointing… ‘So that’s… south-east, yeah?’
Con nodded. ‘Whereas this chamber…’
‘Is north-east…’ she finished. ‘Does it still align? – I mean, I remember you mentioning the stars moving over time?’
‘It still aligns; the stars move, but not the sun, which is why Stonehenge is still aligned on the solstices.’
‘Fuck. Can you remember that solstice at Glasto?’ she laughed. They’d been camping on site the year she’d played – having refused to be put-up elsewhere and flown or driven in. Con had delighted in the kudos of being seen in the company of Mellifluous… but Mel herself had found it increasingly uncomfortable, the constant recognition. They’d gone to the purpose-built stone circle away from the main stages, and got hideously drunk, dancing in the firelight with the crusties to the sound of numerous drums; then some travellers tore down one of the main fences and hundreds broke in before security could stop them, and Con and Mel had gone back to their tents to find they had been broken into and half his stuff nicked. Rock ‘n’ Fucking Roll… bastards…
…
‘We’ll have to come here at midsummer, Con!’ she had cooed, approaching the twilit mound.
Bowing their heads they had gone inside the low passage, feeling their way in the dark, their hands either side on smooth, damp walls; crouching low they had reached an internal chamber, its back side was open to the sky where only half the mound had been reconstructed; originally they would have been at the heart of the mound, earth on all sides, but the modern rebuilding had left half open to lend light to the chamber. At its centre stood a stone the size of a grown man or woman, smooth, like a fossilised trunk of a tree; Melissa had placed her arms around the stone and kissed it.
‘Holy Mother Brigantia!’ she had said, and taking the quartz stones she had gathered from her pocket she had struck the two together – causing a spark – but no ordinary spark – a flash, like lightning within a storm cloud – but from inside the stones rather than outside. She did it again. A smell of acrid burning hit his nostrils.
‘Mother stones… stones of light…. Stars in river of the night…’ she had said. And all the while, the pillar, like Lot’s wife, stood before her, just visible in the half-light of evening. Con looked up through the gap in the chamber; the star Altair shone in the south, below the cross of Cygnus, taking flight through the faint blush of the Milky Way that had just begun to become visible above him, and a paleness to the east heralded the rising of the moon, still hidden behind the trees.
‘This is a palace of the Sidhe; a doorway to the fairy realm; the mother’s blessing, the bendith y mamau dwell here – and have done for all time…I saw a fairy once…’
Con had looked at the ecstatic look on her face. Kooky as ever, he had thought.
‘It wasn’t like Tinkerbell…’ she said, ‘it was in a field near here; it was like the earth, and was dancing in the field, kind of jumping around…somersaulting.’
‘Like the earth?’
‘Earthy, kind of reddish-brown… like one of those bog bodies they’ve found…not small, not tiny, I mean… 4 foot high or so? There’s an Irish folktale I read about, the tale of Selena Moor, where a woman is held captive by the fairies and explains to her human lover that the fairies were star-worshippers who lived long ago… I think they’re the spirits of the people who built these mounds and still dwell here…’.
‘As ghosts?’ Con had asked.
Mel had shrugged. ‘What is a ghost? I think it’s all consciousness on some level… maybe when you die you can become fixed to some part of the land – a tree, or hill, stream, maybe. Maybe you just blend into the consciousness behind everything; so, there’s no difference between ghost, human, spirit, fairy, whatever…’
She opened her blue eyes wide and stood, arms outstretched; the silver and blue dress she’d casually thrown on under a thick crochet cardigan hanging loose like the robe of some ancient priestess.
‘I call thee, beautiful ones, Lordly Ones, that dwell in the hollow hills. Inspire me; give me voice!’ and as she clashed the stones together above her head, causing them to flare, she began to chant, her voice high, ethereal, in words Con couldn’t understand.
‘Dewch Bendith y Mamau; dewch in mewn; I’r fryn yr hen bobl… ellyllon, ellyllon… dw’i’n eisiau bwyta… y pair dadeni…’ she half-sang, in the broken Welsh she was beginning to learn…
He had lit a cigarette and she had frowned, continuing to sing, but ushering him towards the gap in the chamber, wrinkling her nose.
And then the chamber lit up as the lights in the yard of the farm house in the next field went on, and Con and Melissa had stifled laughter, suddenly quiet.
‘That farmer’s going to think he’s heard the fairies!’ Con grinned. Then he frowned - ‘he’s not going to come in here with a gun, is he?’
‘This is Wales, you dick, not the Wild West!’
‘Mel, I’m pleased you’re happier.’ Con had said, when the light had been extinguished and the farmer gone back to the safety of his cottage.
Mel had looked at the floor, smiled and then raised her head.
‘I’m in love, Con.’
He didn’t have to ask if it was someone else – he knew it.
‘But Anthony mustn’t know, not yet. He’d do everything he could to ruin it and I can’t have that. I’m happy, Con! I’ll leave him in time, I just need more time.’
Time. One thing Melissa did not have. Six months later they’d found her face down in that same stream from which she’d plucked the quartz stones that night. Afon Braint. River of the Brigantia; the High One. Anthony had found out about her affair. He’d marched into the University and confronted the new man, a fellow in the Welsh Department – and put the fear of God into him, and threatened all kinds of stuff that had driven him to end it with Mel…
And she’d asked me to come up and help her sort it out and I hadn’t, thought Con.
They had left the mound to find the night scattered with stars; Jupiter was burning low in the south-east, while the moon sailed above the eastern horizon, between the horns of Taurus, bright, on its way to being full; and the three belt-stars of Orion had just appeared above the trees below it.
Mel had stopped Con, and pointed directly overhead ‘the Mother above, and below’ she had said. ‘The River in heaven, and river on earth – that’s Llys Don, court of Danu, the Mother,’ she said, pointing at the W-shaped stars of Cassiopeia; ‘Do you think that’s why they built the tomb here, beside her stream; they saw the stones in the water, the light-giving quartz shining in the dark, and thought they were fallen stars?’
In the depths stood dazzling stones aheap
As a glitter through glass that glowed with light,
As streaming stars when on earth men sleep
Stare in the welkin in winter night’
And she had quietly sung to herself a new song…
I seek for the Mother
To cry no more
to find where her cool white waters rise…
In the depths of the water
To sigh no more
Lie stones fallen from the skies
‘I think they believed that the heavenly river started here… it’s heaven on earth. It’s the crossing point.’
‘It seems familiar, Mel’ he had said; ‘but I can’t put my finger on it. Have we been here before?’
‘I hadn’t til I moved here; I can’t see how you could have.’ She said; as twins they had an almost perfect knowledge of both their shared past, and subsequent travels.
But it was a feeling he couldn’t shake; and a few months later, after Christmas, he discovered, or so he thought, why.
He had been running ancient site alignments through his computer for his PhD. Having dispensed with the solsticial alignments of the main sites like Stonehenge and Avebury, and finding them rarer than he had imagined, he had started to look at other, less well-known sites. And he had begun, out of interest, with Bryn Celli, looking to model the summer solstice sunrise with new computer software he had at hand.
He had phoned her, shaken and excited.
‘Can you remember I said Bryn Celli was familiar? I know why. That dream I had years ago, with the horse and the river, remember?’ She had.
‘That was Bryn Celli?’
‘Yeah. Listen. Remember it as on a sort of henge site that hadn’t been built yet, yeah? And there was a river, with three cows, and beyond the river mountains with a cleft in.’
‘Yep, I do remember. But can you see the mountains from Bryn Celli? I can’t remember…’
‘Now you can’t – but that’s because there’s trees on the hill, but take the trees away… I’ve got this program called Horizon, and I can create a model of any horizon in the UK so I can plot the rising and setting points of the heavenly bodies … anyway – I put in Bryn Celli to find the summer solstice rising point, just to check it works, which it does – but then I looked at the horizon image and there was this massive cleft in the mountains! It’s the bloody Llanberis pass. It’s fucking identical Mel… I’ll email you an image; remember I did that painting after the dream? It’s identical.’
And it was. The vista of Snowdonia from Bryn Celli, with the river between the mound and the mountains, was precisely what he had painted all those years ago.
‘Jesus. That’s spooky, Con. And bloody cool… but what does it mean?!’
‘Oh, it gets waaay cooler,’ he said, laughing. ‘I looked at the alignment of the Llanberis pass – and from the site of Bryn Celli it marks the exact rising point of the midwinter sunrise.’
Mel had gone quiet.
‘I think,’ Con continued, ‘that they built the site there because it marked the point from which the midwinter sun could be seen rising from between the two highest peaks in Snowdonia; it can’t be a coincidence… Why the fuck did I dream it? And what does the river turning to milk mean?’
Mel spoke up – ‘if it’s the Braint, then the goddess in your dream must have been Brigantia.’
‘I suppose so, but why did I go into the water? What does it mean, ultimately?’
He didn’t know. But he knew something about the sun…
His research had already uncovered many examples of the imagery of the sun rising or setting between two peaks – in a number of ritual sites such as in Orkney, where the Hills of Hoy framed the setting of the midwinter sun as seen from the Stones of Stenness; it was a common theme; the sun rising out of twin hills was even found in Egyptian and Minoan art. Or the cave from which Amaterasu, the Japanese sun-goddess had been released; the walls of the cave, broken out of the earth… and the silhouette of the mountains as seen from this point on Anglesey was as perfect a rendition of this ancient symbol as one could hope to see…
The night after he had rung her again…
‘Mel, in the Bronze Age the sun was linked to the horse… there’s a bronze chariot from Denmark called the Trundholm sun chariot, and it’s pulling the sun along on, like, a small cart; it’s in Norse myth, too, the sun that bears the sun and moon – and in my dream – I look up at the cleft, get out of the river, and there’s a horse with a moon between it’s brows – it’s like it’s telling me to look at these old mythic images… it was there, 20 years ago, the cleft in the mountains of a site I’d never seen, being link to the astronomical or mythic imagery of the rising of the sun… and now I’m doing my doctorate on this stuff and the dream is coming true…what, Mel, is telling me these things, and why?’
‘So what about the milk in the river?’ she had asked, ‘if the rest is true, then that ought to be, too. Maybe that’ll answer the question, or at least help.’
‘That’s what I need to look at next.’ he had said.
‘Speak to you tomorrow night!’ she had joked, but she didn’t have to wait that long; it was 7 the next morning when he rang her. He hadn’t slept; he had been awake all night, trawling through books, articles and the internet…
And then he told her he’d found it; if not the ‘why’, he had at least found what seemed to be a stunning parallel to the milk in the river image…but now, sitting in the Red Lion a year and a bit later, he wished to god he hadn’t ever looked at it; for what else had put the idea in her head about going back to the river and submerging herself in the water, than his insistence on the magical nature of the dream?
‘I’ve got it, Mel, I’ve found a story that fits the river of milk… like really fits it…a Celtic tale, Irish…’
…
The image from the Pearl poem flashed once more again in his mind’s eye: the gleaming stones in a river that separated this world from paradise; and on its other bank a girl –
Bot the water was depe, I dorst not wade.
But the water was deep, I dared not wade…
Not that deep, he thought, swallowing the last of his now lukewarm beer; mid-shin deep, he recalled; but deep enough to drown in if you have a belly-full of alcohol and a heart heavy with sorrow and a bag full of quartz stones to weigh you down.