Part Three: Ancestral voices
Chapter 30: The Protest
Conall’s fitful sleep had been disturbed from just after dawn by the passing of vehicles on their way to the circle. Eventually he gave up trying to sleep and checked his phone for the time; it was just gone seven, and there was a text message from Wolf waiting for him: ‘Main event at 10 – meet at the Devil’s Chair at 9’
Con rolled over and turned the gas on under the coffee pot. Before long he heard another vehicle arriving, parking up next to his, and then music and voices. He threw on some clothes, poured a coffee and opened the side door to greet the day.
A camper van had pulled up beside his, and a young couple with a toddler sat on the grass nearby; the woman, with purple and pink highlighted dreadlocks greeted him and asked him if he knew anything about the protest.
‘We’re meeting at the Devil’s Chair at nine, which gives us plenty of time to move down to the excavation on the avenue for when the Chairman arrives. Then Wolf’s going to hand over the petition and we’ll accompany the chairman to the museum.’
At that moment a large grey van bearing the BBC logo drove past.
The young woman frowned. ‘I hope they’re not expecting trouble. It’s a peaceful protest.’
Con shook his head. ‘No – that’s not for our benefit – Wolf said the chairman’s a media whore,’ he chuckled ‘and that the media were bound to be here for the opening of the museum. It’s all word of mouth, you know – the protest; they have no idea anything is going to happen.’
Conall offered them a coffee, but they were fine, and so returned to his camper. He checked his phone to find another message from Wolf.
‘Put the kettle on’ it read.
A few minutes later Wolf’s Yorkshire tones could be discerned outside as he spoke to the couple in the newly arrived van.
‘Well, I’m fookin’ chuffed you’ve made it, Ian,’ he was saying to the man
‘Good to see you Wolf me old mate’ the other replied. Wolf said ‘I meant to catch up in the Spring when I was down in Glasto, but it means a lot you’re here…’
‘You too Wolf.’
He knocked on the window of Con’s van.
‘Come in. Coffee’s done…Bloody Hell!’
Wolf, though it was impossible to see this was Wolf, was standing outside. He was wearing a hood of wolfskin – more properly an entire skin of a wolf, head and all, draped over his shoulders, over a brown woollen cloak, with the wolf’s face leering above his own, which was hidden in shadow; he was bare chested, this, too, aside from its usual tattoos, painted in whorls and spirals of ochre, with the paws of the wolf crossed over it. Around his neck hung a leather circular pouch inscribed with a design of a man between two rearing wolves. In one hand Wolf was clasping a roughly crafted spear, decorated with feathers – the other hand, empty, pulled open the camper door.
‘I think you may need to bring it out – don’t think the wolfskin’s gonna fit in there and I’m not taking it off.’
Con brought the cafetiere over to the stone against which Wolf had decided to sit.
‘So is your intention to maul the chairman or just shit him up?’ he asked.
‘Hehe – didn’t want to look like some sad hippy – think this’ll get me noticed?’
Con snorted. ‘Arrested, maybe.’
‘What were you two up to last night, anyway?’ Wolf said, blowing on his coffee to cool it. ‘Hayden was well pissed off.’
‘Oh well. She hoped he was asleep.’
‘He was awake at midnight chatting with me, and of course she rolls in saying she’d been to the circle with you.’
‘Well, nothing went on; he can fuck right off.’
‘Hehe – that’s what she said to him. They weren’t up when I left, so maybe they’re making it up…’ Wolf winked at Con.
Con shot him a look of distaste but bit his tongue. He thought of her words. ‘I don’t love Hayden. Maybe I’ve never really loved anyone.’
He changed the subject.
‘What time will we have to leave. I need a wash.’
‘Bollocks, man – just stick some ochre on – go as a berserker!’
‘I’d just look dirty. Look, give us five minutes…’
Wolf and Con reached the Devil’s Chair at quarter to nine. The Avenue had been empty, no sign at all that the chairman might be visiting that day, save for a cordon of hazard tape set around the excavation site. The sight that greeted them in the circle was different, however. A group of about twenty people, clearly Wolf’s friends, given their colourful get-up, were sat on and around the Devil’s Chair, while further on, in the carpark of the Red Lion, were several vehicles including the BBC van. In the adjoining section of road, individuals could be seen walking backwards and forwards, preparing for the visit – people in suits or visi-vests.
‘Is he here yet?’ Wolf asked a greying, bearded man in a tie-dye t-shirt and baggy shorts.
‘Yeah. They’ve gone to the tea rooms first, to get ready. The BBC guy said they’re filming him at the excavation site at ten.’
‘Our man on the inside, hehe. The others got wind of anything?’
‘Nah – we blend in with all the other weirdos!’ the man laughed.
‘You still think it’s better to confront him near the excavation?’
The man nodded. ‘The bones are in the museum, but you’ll not get in there. But they can hardly stop you walking along the Avenue.’
For the first time to Con Wolf seemed a little unsure.
‘Did he say if they’d be walking?’
The greybeard nodded. ‘They’ll be walking past us here so I guess we just follow them?’
‘That’s the idea.’
‘Or,’ Con suggested, ‘you go up now and hide behind the stones…’
‘Tempting,’ Wolf said ‘but I’m thinking if anymore turn up we’re not going to be able to hide!’ As he spoke another small group of people were arriving. Con scoured the crowd, looking for Shen. The thought of her lying beside Hayden in bed was making him feel sick. Come on, he thought, willing her to arrive.
After a short while the first of the archaeologists began to appear, making their way through the assembled crowd to the Avenue. A few of the younger ones, hard-hatted and wearing their luminous jackets, stopped to talk with Wolf, who they had talked to in the pub over the last few days. Then a larger group could be seen moving opposite the pub, joining the gaggle of yellow-jackets and suits, all now crowding around someone Con couldn’t quite see. The assembled crowd of a two dozen or so people began to walk towards the stones where Wolf’s band sat on the grass; they passed by without so much of a second look, though one of the two camera crews, a local news channel, halted to take some sweeping shots of the scene, a view improved by the sun breaking out of the light cloud that had been hanging around since dawn.
As they passed, Con caught sight of the man at the focus of the crowd – the chairman, in a smart black suit and hard hat, a small delicate man with the look of a schoolboy in a new blazer, chatting animatedly to a heavily bearded archaeologist.
Con scanned the far reaches of the circle for any sign of Shen, but then Wolf was by his side and as if summoned by some silent command the protestors all stood and gathered around Wolf.
The main body of archaeologists, English Heritage officials and the press had left the circle and could be seen crossing the road that lead to the Avenue. Wolf turned to Con and pressed two fingers against Con’s cheek, dragging them slowly down in a soft, cold, line. Wolf’s fingers were red with ochre.
‘You’re a warrior now, Conall.’ he smiled.
‘It’s time’ he shouted to the gathering, whom Con reckoned to now be easily double that of the official party.
The greybeard from before began to beat a large wooden-framed drum, a beat taken up by others in the group – a slow, steady beat, increasing to a march. And as they walked, in a double line, the drumbeats seemed to echo and increase, joined by a soft chanting and the playing of native flutes.
Con felt ill at ease. He agreed in principal with the protest, but he wasn’t a ‘joiner’, as he put it; happier to sit at the side-lines or to be up front, lecturing, guiding; he wasn’t a follower, and so he felt awkward. And where was Shen?!
The procession moved from the Devil’s Chair, and up the tree-lined bank behind it, from where the archaeologists could be seen gathered about their excavation area beside the stone in the Avenue – their heads now turning to see what the noise was coming over the bank. Con wondered how it looked to them – this raggle-taggle band approaching down the slope of the henge bank and across the road, to a steady, haunting rhythm, accompanied by the otherworldly sound of chanting voices, in words he did not understand.
By the time Wolf’s group had entered the field all activity around the excavation had ceased and all eyes were turned their way – and cameras too. Con could see the chief archaeologist moving around amongst his fellows, red-faced, his interview with the Chairman having been brought to an unexpected and troublesome halt. The younger students seemed to be smiling, amused at the interruption; others just sipped their take-away coffees nonchalantly. And the Chairman looked on with cool detachment, every now and again whispering something to an aide who would rush off in a flap and shout something into a phone.
Con strangely began to feel inconspicuous, as if the two lines of ochre on his cheek had rendered him invisible. The drums continued their rhythm as the protestors fanned out, forming a semi-circle around the official group, practically hemming them in against the fence that stood behind the stone. The beat seemed to increase in strength and speed, from a march to a heartbeat, and faster, until Wolf raised his spear and brought it down with a shout and the drums stopped. Protestors and archaeologists stood face to face in silence. Somewhere a crow cawed.
Wolf stepped forward.
The Chairman, to give him credit, stepped forward, too – a full head shorter than Wolf, he nevertheless looked up into that shadowed face with equanimity.
‘May I help?’ he asked, squinting – as Wolf, cunningly, had stood with the sun at his back.
‘We have come today,’ came the voice from under the wolf’s head, ‘to protest against the placement of the bones of our ancestor in the museum. I have a petition here signed by nearly a thousand neo-pagans, witches and druids, demanding that people of our faith, which hold these bones as sacred, be consulted over the new placement of these bones.’
He handed the chairman the print-out of signatures.
The chairman looked at the sheaves of paper, folded them in half and put them at his side.
The cameras, which had hitherto been on the red-painted man in the wolfskin now turned to the smaller man in his pristine tailoring.
‘English heritage,’ the Chairman began ‘is committed to the preservation of Britain’s past; we are dedicated to preserve the sites and artefacts in our custodianship for future generations, for their education and knowledge. I believe that the movement of the West Kennet bones from out of storage to a place where they can be seen and appreciated and studied not just by archaeologists but by the public and yourselves as pagans is a positive step. I shall study your petition; we do have an advisory body that looks into the impact our work has on the beliefs of those who worship at sites such as these. If you wish I can put you in touch with the spokesperson for that body.’
Con watched as the chairman delivered these lines. They hadn’t been rehearsed, like Wolf’s – they seemed to flow from the Chairman naturally, effortlessly. He seemed neither fazed or angry at Wolf’s disruption of his day – no – if anything, Con surmised, he seemed pleased… the cameras, after all, were rolling, and he’d been given the chance to put forward his policy in a suddenly more newsworthy piece of footage.
‘You see these bones are not just those of an ancestor of those who follow your beliefs, ‘ he went on to say, ‘but of many of us here who follow a variety of them; it is with great respect that we are allowing many, many more people to come and see his remains in this brilliantly designed new exhibit…’
Before he could continue with his rhetoric Wolf interrupted him. ‘Respect?’ Wolf said, incredulously. ‘have you any idea what this man believed, or what his wishes would have been, as an individual?’
‘The beliefs of our ancestors have been lost in time,’ the Chairman said, smooth, unflustered, ‘do you think he would have minded knowing all the good that has already come and will continue to do so from this brilliant new display? Analysis of his bones will teach us a great deal about how his people lived; about their health, about his own condition and the society that supported him. How many people will come to the museum and be inspired by seeing him? How many future archaeologists will find their career looking at his bones? How many lecturers, pathologists…pagans will be inspired by visiting him here? And what should we have done – have the bones remain in storage, or buried again where no one could see them, or be inspired by them?’
‘Yes. If that is what he wanted – as I believe it is; this was his land and he wished at last to go into that earth that had long been soaked with the blood of his people. You are taking him away from his family, his people. You are putting him on display like some circus freak. He was probably a priest, a prophet – would you condone digging up some early English Saint and putting his head on display as education? No. because you treat paganism as a second-class religion.’
‘I can assure you that is not the case. We treat all religions with equal respect and all religious imagery and artefacts likewise. There is no evidence saying this man was what you say. We do respect that he was once an individual – and surely by bringing him back home and honouring him by placing him in the museum is better than leaving his remains in some box in a museum storeroom?’
Con was suddenly aware that a white car had pulled up in the Avenue and three police officers had approached.
‘Was an individual?’ Wolf asked, face to face with the Chairman. ‘At which point does one lose that status? Could I dig up the grave of your grandparents and put their bones on display because they are no longer individuals? What makes us such? Is it when we can put a name to a bone? What about, then, the tomb of the Unknown Soldier – can we display his bones without worry, because he has no name? Do that. Put him in a case. Stick his skull on a lunch box or a key ring or a postcard; use him to fill your tills. There are double standards here.’
The first look of anger flashed across the Chairman’s face, but it was momentary, and a politician’s smile soon replaced it.
‘No decisions on these matters will be decided today. As I have said I shall look at this petition and pass it on to the spokesperson for pagan affairs; I doubt very much if things will change but I promise you it will be investigated. We have no desire to isolate or insult any individual or group in our policies; however, in cases such as these it may be the benefits of our policy for future generations outweighs the perceived harm inflicted on a few individuals. But I will look into this seriously; had I been approached before now I would have had time to formulate an answer. But if you’d excuse me I have a busy day ahead and there are people here who have worked very hard on this site to share their knowledge with the public, and I wish to thank them and to celebrate today with them, for it is a great achievement and our knowledge of the past has been illuminated much by it, which I’m sure you appreciate.’
And with that he turned.
Con, who had been standing a few feet behind Wolf, looked at the floor uneasily.
As the Chairman turned away one of the Police Officers walked up to Con and asked him to step down and disband the group.
‘Is it illegal to gather here, at a public place?’ Con asked, brows knitted.
‘We don’t want any trouble…’ the officer said.
Wolf, removing the wolf-skin from his head, leaned in close ‘We’re a peaceful gathering; what are we doing wrong?’
‘Just tell your friends to disband; any further gatherings or disruptions to the day will be judged as a disturbance of the peace and will be dealt with firmly.’
His eyes flashing Wolf leaned in close – eye to eye with the Officer.
I am the land; that is all that I am he sung loudly; the Officer winced but maintained eye contact.
I am the land that is all that I am
And then other voices joined in.
I am the land, that is all that I am;
I am the land that is all around me!
Wolf smiled and turned away from the policemen and opened his arms wide to the crowd.
‘Our views have been expressed; the petition handed over – thank you for your support, friends of the ancestors! Now if you’d like to join me in the Red Lion!’
Wolf was laughing, but Con felt subdued. Is this all he had wanted to achieve? The Chairman had been unmoved; like Hayden two nights before he had made a number of good points – but Wolf had been right - had this been a relic of any other religious group then perhaps the Chairman would have very much been treading on eggshells, wary of causing offence. Con could sense Wolf’s frustration. Paganism was not given the same regard as other religions, despite the Chairman’s lip-service. And what of the ancestors wish? Wolf, again, was right – he would have wanted to be with his people. Yet the Chairman had put over his argument well, perhaps too well; this would appear on the news as a colourful disturbance that might liven up a slightly prosaic report on the head of an organisation visiting a newly uncovered burial and a set of bones in a refurbished museum - hardly stirring stuff. Wolf’s protest had moved the story up a few items but not in such way as to help Wolf’s cause. Having said that, as the group began to dissipate, the call for a morning pint being a strong lure, the local news team broke from the Chairman’s group to halt Wolf in his tracks.
But Conall didn’t hear what he was saying, for over the rise of the bank of the circle, walking in the opposite direction to those leaving the protest, he could see Shen – he raised a hand to get Wolf’s attention but the latter was in full flow, and Con left, moving quickly between the protestors who were in no hurry. In a few moments he was within hailing distance, and he found himself suddenly dizzy with happiness. To think that just a few hours before they’d been in the circle, alone, and that he’d backed away from her – not knowing how she felt – and now, having been sick with worry all morning that she had been avoiding him, just see her approaching, to see her smile - an unchecked open smile - was wonderful.
‘Con – God, I’m sorry – I fell back asleep – I… did I miss much?’
Con smiled.
‘Hard to say – you’ll probably see it on the local news later. I don’t know. I don’t know what I expected. He handed over the petition and the chairman said he’d look at it.’
‘Well that’s good then.’
‘But he kind of said it was unlikely. I don’t think the bones are going to be repatriated. I think Wolf will be disappointed.’
‘Poor Wolf. But everything happens for a reason. I’m sure him being here has been for a reason. It’ll be strange when he goes – I’ve quite liked having him around.’
I wonder if she’ll think the same of me, Con thought.
‘When’s he going?’
‘Tomorrow – so one last night at the pub with him, if you’re up to it?’
‘Yeah, of course.’
‘I’ll need a drink by then.’ She said.
‘Hayden?’
She looked at him sidelong.
‘Oh yes.’
‘Not going well?’
‘No.’
Good. He thought.
Chapter 31 The Spiral castle
A pale and dour faced C S Lewis was nursing his coffee cup in the corner of the Red Lion.
‘I am so very sorry, chaps. I wanted to wake well; I am improving, granted, but I feel I have jinxed our trip.’
‘Nonsense.’ replied Barfield. ‘Had we marched on yesterday we would have missed a great deal. Maybe once the stone is put up, you’ll be feeling more chipper; I am counting on it. Tonight, I think, we should climb Silbury Hill and then tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep, we can head to Calne and take the bus to Wells. We shall be in Glastonbury a day later than scheduled, that’s all, and we shall have plenty of time to make it to Porlock.’
‘I do hope so, Owen. I’m rather excited about climbing that hill; I do get the feeling that it wasn’t built to be looked at, but to be climbed. Who is that fellow with Tollers?’
Barfield looked over his shoulder to where Tolkien stood at the bar with a short man in a white collar-less shirt and a cloth cap.
‘I have no idea. I used to think Tollers aloof, but I now see I was wrong; distant, yes, often lost in his own thoughts, but not aloof.’
Barfield refilled Lewis’s coffee cup.
‘I do wish you lived in Oxford, Owen. I’ll never understand why you didn’t pursue an academic career.’
‘Oh, I question it, too, Jack, believe me – I guess it wasn’t meant to be. I didn’t feel I had much choice – family pressures, as you know. But don’t think of me as despairing – when I’m working I do often enjoy it; it’s more a problem when I’m here – with you; then I wish I could write and spend my days on my ideas… but the grass is always greener! You are forever complaining about how little time you get to research, how you have too many tutorials, or essays to mark – of the faculty’s bureaucracy. The picture you paint is at odds with my ideal Oxford, which is what I really yearn for, an ideal.’
Barfield sat in silence, his face shadowing a gamut of internal conflicts.
‘And besides I can write; I have no less time than you or Tollers for that; and what I write no man can threaten to end my tenure if it wonders far from current academic thinking.’
Lewis smiled and nodded. ‘Indeed, Owen. I must say I couldn’t imagine quite what department we would have to shoe-horn you into – English? Philosophy? Religion? Each would be some procrustean bed that it would pain you to lie upon.’
Barfield smiled. ‘Yes, I’m a Romantic in an age when that is frowned upon. Better, then, to weather the stormy seas of my ideas alone, far from the shore, than be smashed to pieces trying to find a safe haven.’
‘Ha! I like that! I’ve never thought of academia as a haven; maybe some isolated cove, its watering places full of washed up old salts!’
‘Speak for yourself’ said Tolkien, sitting himself down beside Barfield. ‘I’ve been speaking to one of the labourers; apparently the last stone took three days to erect, so don’t be expecting to see anything finished today.’
‘Three days?!’ said Lewis. ‘Where’s Merlin when you need him?’
Tolkien and Barfield exchanged a look and laughed.
‘We were saying the exact same thing yesterday,’ Tolkien explained.
‘Now there’s an idea for a book,’ Lewis began, ‘what if Merlin were to reappear in our modern era… why does no-one write the kind of books I want to read?’
‘Then maybe you should write them?’ Tolkien stated.
Lewis nodded, slowly – his eyes focussed beyond his two friends. ‘Maybe I should. Don’t you find that books only go so far? One reads so many books these days that tease, that suggest they’re going to supply something wholesome, fulfilling, but leave one empty! They don’t have the meatiness of the old sagas.’
‘But the old sagas have myth, they have that rich vein of gold on which to draw – most modern writing doesn’t go down beneath the topsoil; it’s surface; windblown, empty. Myth must be at the foundation of a good story – so it resonates, has a sense of depth – like this place…’ Tolkien said, lifting his hand to the window, ‘which is myth set in stone, rather than in letters and ink.’
‘The Boann myth?’ Lewis asked.
Tolkien shook his head.
‘That’s only part of it; that’s a myth for the hill and the river, but I don’t know about here, the circle itself. I don’t yet presume to imagine what went on in the circles themselves, what kind of ritual may have been performed here, nor why.’
Not, he imagined, drunken and lewd rich city men capering to the chant of Pan…
‘I think the medieval legends only help us so far: the Merlin myth may contain elements of older traditions but for the most-part it’s your usual folkloric fare – petrified giants, fighting dragons… if there is deeper myth then it lies well-hidden.’
‘And by deeper myth…?’ Lewis asked.
‘The perennial myth: of losing and finding – of the death and the eucatastrophe!’ Tolkien said, eyes blazing for a moment. ‘That, really, is the core of all great myths.’
‘And true myths…’ Lewis said, referring to a conversation years before when Tolkien and Dyson had persuaded him that the Christ story was exactly that – like the myths and legends he loved, but true.
‘Would you see the myths performed here as being linked to the cycle of the crops, orient and immortal?’ Lewis asked. ‘The circles themselves suggest so, I would say.’
‘Indeed Jack; I can imagine a seasonal ritual held every year here when the April showers have swelled the apple blossom and the crops begun to grow, which, until that time have been held fast in winters embrace – imprisoned in the dark earth, the realm of the dead or of the giants or titans - a treasure held in the dragon’s cave waiting for the killing of the guardian and the release.’
Lewis nodded.
‘There’s something in the return of the warmth and greenery that stirs one’s soul; I imagine it was celebrated from time immemorial, with many different names given to the dramatis personae. One wonders what prefiguration of Christ was worshipped here – do you think a maiden like Persephone, or a youth like Adonis?’
‘Your Sulis, Tollers…was it her? Celtic myth tells us little of dying and rising gods, it would seem – at least on my paltry readings.’
Barfield lent in ‘Charles Williams would know, I’m sure; that’s something you must remember to ask him.’
‘Hmm. I’m sure you’re right. He knows the old Cymric stories best… not that your own knowledge, Tollers, is any less.’ he said on seeing Tolkien’s face fall.
‘Remember that poem by Taliesin he enthused about – the Spoils of the underworld - that told of the prisoner in the underworld, imprisoned in Caer Sidi, the spiral castle, and rescued by Arthur who sails his ship Prydwen through its seven gates.’
‘Careful, you don’t want Petrie to hear that…’ Tolkien joked. ‘Prydwen means ‘white face’ – it’s the sun ship sailing the heavens, like the sun-ship sailing through the body of Nut, the night sky…and the seven gates could well be…’
‘…the seven heavenly bodies that lend their names to the days of the week…’ Lewis added.
‘Precisely. Petrie would no doubt decide this was an old solar Egyptian myth and that Taliesin was heir to the Priests of Amun-Re.’
‘I guess the spiral castle that holds the prisoner is the turning night sky, if the whole enterprise is a celestial one.’ Lewis considered.
‘Or a place from where the night sky is seen turning, so that it feels like it is you who are spinning.’
‘Which, in fact, we are – not that they knew that before Galileo.’ Barfield added. ‘So, the spiral castle might be the sacred temenos from which the turning of the heavens was observed.’
Tolkien nodded; ‘But aside from using the circle as an observatory, it’s hard to see how they might have been used in rites – it doesn’t explain what went on here, any more than the orientation of a church does! I said to Owen last night, Jack, that these sites, especially Stonehenge, remind one of Merlin’s observatory in the woods – where he was said to observe the stars through its 60 doors and windows. Strange that Merlin should also be associated with Marlborough. There must be a link between him, the stars, and these stones.’
Lewis thought a moment. ‘60 doors and windows; it sounds a draughty place.’ Lewis sipped his coffee in thought. ‘He was, of course, imprisoned in stone, wasn’t he – by the fairy woman Vivienne? Or was it Nimue?’
‘Yes, set under stone, or within a crystal cave or island of glass.’ Tolkien said.
‘A strange myth – but not unlike the prisoner in Caer Sidi – wasn’t one of the ‘caers’ of the poem Caer Wydr, the fortress of glass? Was he, I wonder, a form of Merlin, or vice versa?’
‘Remember that Merlin is to be sacrificed at the castle of Vortigern, as a foundation sacrifice, his blood cementing the stones and ensuring they wouldn’t
fall…that surely is the origin of his subterranean burial.’
‘Whereon he finds two dragons fighting…like the image on the font here in Avebury Church.’ Barfield reminded them.
‘It’s all so confusing and muddled,’ grumbled Tolkien, who despite loving the unpicking of myths was feeling the lack of a good college library to follow up his intuitions. ‘I’m sure there is a connection between this place and Merlin, but also, somehow, the Lady of the Waters ought to fit in… where is the Sulis or the Boann of the Merlin myth, the drowned river woman?
Lewis shrugged. We need to interrogate Fraser at Jesus College on our return. I don’t recall such a figure.’
Tolkien nodded, sadly. ‘Me neither. Me neither. But it doesn’t mean she’s not just hiding in plain sight.’
‘And Merlin,’ Lewis asked, ‘’where’s he hiding? In Silbury Hill?’
‘Not according to Petrie.’ Tolkien stated, ‘if the myth is true, he’s going to be under stone, not earth.’
Barfield chuckled ‘And today we’ll see those stones going back in place; let’s hope Keiller isn’t looking for some blood-sacrifice to keep them from falling again.’
Chapter 32: The Glass Prison
There was a queue into the new museum annexe, but the clouds had parted and Con was happy just to be near Shen.
She stood just ahead of him; he looked down at her dark hair bound into a single, long braid; and perhaps she felt him looking for she turned round, and seeing him staring she smiled and frowned and the same time.
‘Are you looking at my hair? It’s a mess. I didn’t have time to wash it…’
‘It looks fine to me.’ He said, embarrassed to have been caught, yet secretly kicking himself for his usual under exaggeration. Her hair was beautiful. She was beautiful. There was something in her bearing, her spirit that enchanted him; rendered him speechless. He felt dull and silent compared to her.
I am so quiet now, he thought. He thought back to an image of himself laughing with Melissa – it seemed a different Conall – carefree, spontaneous, lit-up. Where was his fire now?
A rill of her soft hair rose in the breeze and Conall’s chest quivered.
I’m like that figure in that fairy tale – Faithful John – whose heart is bound in iron fetters, he thought. One day it’s just going to burst. I’ve bound it so that I can’t feel anything anymore – pain or happiness.
Shen turned again and smiled.
‘Finally!’ she said as the queue began to move.
But her words passed Conall by. Her smile that creased up her dark eyes was charming – like a child’s, almost – joyous; and for a tremulous moment Conall’s heart leaped and he was suffused with an emotion that had long deserted him: he was suddenly happy. And in that moment, he lifted his hand, reaching out with the intention of smoothing the hair where it tumbled in the breeze against the back of her head. The idea of running his hands through those locks was exquisite; of touching her lovely head. I could kiss her, he thought. But then the light seemed to fade at the thought of Hayden and of Melissa and of his guilt.
She looked back and frowned. ‘Are you ok?’ she asked.
He nodded. I’m such a fucking coward. I wish I could say fuck you to Hayden and to everything else that’s holding me back. What must she think of me? All she must see is this silent pathetic man – no fire or get up and go – happy to coast along, withdrawn and distant; but inside I’m like a fucking whirlpool of emotion and thoughts... Don’t you know, Shenandoah, that I adore you?
‘You sure? You’re very quiet.’
‘Lots on my mind.’
‘Ahh,…me too.’
‘Anything you want to share?’ he tried.
She looked at him right in the eyes, suddenly serious.
‘No – it wouldn’t be fair.’
‘Try me, I’m a big boy now.’
‘No. It really wouldn’t be. Forget I said anything.’
‘How am I supposed to do that?’
‘You figure it out – you’re a big boy now,’ she replied. Touché.
And internally he was screaming out the question he so wished to ask – was it to do with me?
They remained in silence until they reached the new display, set back into the modern glass and steel annexe that had been built on to the side of the old stone museum.
The walls were covered in dioramas showing the development of the Avebury landscape, inset with brightly lit cubes in which various artefacts were placed: stone axes, decorated pots, heads of corn of the type grown by the ancient farmers of the region.
Shen gazed at a large model that showed tiny people clearing a space in a vast wooded landscape where the henge would one day be.
‘It all looks so pedestrian, so dull, doesn’t it. Scraggy farmers in rough skins. Last night when I imagined it, it was tattooed priests in white robes singing chants to the sky…’ She looked disappointed.
‘But who’s to say your image wasn’t closer to the truth than this?’ Con asked, gesturing to the diorama. ‘If this monument was in India or Meso-America you’d have no trouble finding such reconstructions involving colourful priests. British prehistory is seen as dull, muddy, boring – more Brown Age than Bronze Age…but that’s not how I see it – I think your image is more correct.’
‘There’s an image in one of my books of Mayan, or might be Aztec priests on a flat-topped pyramid; all colours, feathers, it’s just gob-smackingly vivid and beautiful; this lot look like medieval peasants....’ she added.
‘I know. Have you seen those prints of the natives of the Pacific North-West? The ones who make totem poles and that really cool art – like the Kwakiutl, or the Haida? There are these photos of their feasts, and they’re all in these big wooden huts, well, halls, out in the forests – and they’re dressed as spirits, as animals – ravens, killer whales, bears… they’re fucking amazing. That’s what it would have been like here… not three or four peasants in brown wondering round in the mud – but people in masks, in costume; hundreds of them, dancing, in colour – with fire, and booze and singing…’
He looked wistful, and it made her smile.
‘The singing…’ he continued; ‘imagine what songs have been lost… the forgotten carols of the midwinter ceremonies… hymns of the henges.’
Shen lifted an eyebrow in curiosity.
‘You’re right; we don’t think of the music; that there may have been folksongs that these people knew – and sung for hundreds maybe thousands of years…it’s kind of haunting. And sad. Incredibly sad.’
‘That said,’ Con added, smiling, ‘Hymns of the henges sounds like a pretty cool debut album, don’t you think?’.
They had moved around the diorama to where they had a bird’s eye view from West Kennet over Silbury towards the henge.
‘It says here the area may have developed here originally because of the springs.’ Shen said, running a finger down the information panel beside the diorama.
‘I was reading some more of Tolkien’s letters this morning before the protest;’ Con said. ‘He makes the connection between the Kennet and an Irish tale about a goddess who loses an eye drinking from the well of wisdom. He says eye in Irish is Suil; and that Silbury and Swallowhead come from that; and that Kennet means Bright dog after Sirius, and that it’s the Milky Way; wish I’d read these a couple of years ago – might have save me a bit of research time! He’d not linked the Milky Way to the henge itself – but he didn’t have astronomy programs like we now have; but he did link it to the Kennet, just as I did to the Braint. I’ve only read a few of the letters – they’re a bit faded and the handwriting is rather small.’
The museum was crowded and Con and Shen found themselves jostled away from the diorama. Con, annoyed at being forced away from Shen beckoned her to follow him into a less busy corner, beneath a panel describing the many Long-Barrows in the area.
‘Look at this, Shen… remember my dream with the three cows by the stream?’
He was pointing at a plan of Beckhampton Long-Barrow, a tomb that lay at the opposite side of the circle to the sanctuary, beyond the westernmost point of the west Avenue.
'The longstones cove, Shen, points to Beckhampton Long-Barrow – and guess what Beckhampton Long-Barrow had in it?’
‘Three cows?’ she said, half-serious.
‘Yep. three ox skulls. It all fits – the milky river is the Kennet; the 3 magical cows are in Beckhampton; so, although my set in Wales on another level it
applies to a myth behind all these sites.’
‘Jeez. That’s a bit freaky. You should be happy; it’s all corroborating your theory!’
Con smiled weakly. ‘It all seems irrelevant now, somehow, now Mel’s gone.’
‘It wasn’t your fault Con’ she said. Con winced.
‘You’re right, though… it’s a bit freaky. Three cows – I mean, it’s either complete bollocks or it goes way above coincidence; and if so – what the hell does that mean?’
A space had opened up in front of the main display: a reconstruction of the chamber in West Kennet, dark, moody and lit by hidden lamps that cast an eerie glow onto the floor of the mock chamber. It had been done well; minus the incongruous modern glass-roof of the real Long-Barrow the reconstruction was, if anything, more atmospheric than the actual monument.
Here, crouched into one corner lay the skeleton of a man – the bones that Piggott had discovered and that had been hidden away in a museum storeroom until now.
He lay on his right side, his legs drawn up to his chest – the empty eye sockets in the dark shiny skull gazing towards the dull glass that separated him from the queue of visitors; he seemed small, fragile – Con looked hard but couldn’t see any sign of the arrow that had been found in his throat, lodged into one of the bones of his neck, the skeleton was too far away and too shadowed.
‘He seems sad.’ Shen said, crouching to better see him.
Conall nodded in agreement. ‘It’s like a glass prison; I mean they’ve done it well, but it’s a mockery, isn’t it? A false tomb behind glass and he’s just lying there, alone.’
Con knelt to get closer – but still the glass and some three feet of space separated them. He wished he could reach out and place his hand on the bones; connect in some way.
‘He was originally one a mound of bones; and there was a whole goat skeleton nearby, too. This is all a bit clean; sanitised.’
What do you want, Old Man? He thought. What can we do to help? He found himself saying the phrase Alfred Mac Govan-Crow had taught him: Itsipaiitapio’pah; Old Man would not have understood the words, but he would have recognised the sentiment; we are one in the Great Spirit, the Being behind all beings; we are part of the same dance, you and I. I know you; I understand you, Con thought. We are both imprisoned behind a wall of glass; both wanting to be back with those we have loved, to escape and be free again. Why are we here when those we love have died and left us?
The image from the day before rose in his mind – soma, golden, streaming from the wound in the man’s throat - the creative sacrifice; the power and the giving… the act of a god…a shaman….a priest…a wizard…
The empty eyes gazed back saying nothing. Conall stood and rubbed his neck; people were waiting for him to move so they could peer into the darkness as Con had; yet Con resented their intrusion – feeling it was done for macabre and ghoulish entertainment. But he chided himself for judging. I don’t know their reasons or thoughts. Goodbye, Old Man, I wish I could help.
‘Shall we go?’ Shen said.
‘Yes, I think we should – let’s grab a coffee.’
They walked out of the museum and into the neighbouring café in silence; both sad and subdued.
In the queue for coffee, his pent-up thoughts began to tumble out again.
‘When I had the dream I didn’t know about the three cows in Beckhampton, or that the pouring of the milk into the waters was found in myth – nor the horse’s relation to the sun in myth, nor of the alignment of Bryn Celli on the Llanberis pass…’
He suddenly stopped speaking. He had wanted to say he’d gone to enact that dream the night Melissa drowned. But something was stopping him; he remembered he had left Shen at the house with Alfred. He’d been telling Alfred about the constellations. And he’d kissed her goodnight; he had gone back to the van but hadn’t slept, feeling anxious, unsettled, alive, jittery – on the verge of something. He’d felt excited, like a bubble of happiness was rising within him, so he’d walked and come to the river, realising the river had been calling him and in his mind’s eye he’d been seeing the river of his dreams – and there it was, milky with moonlight, but he had stood on the banks and shivered. He didn’t know why he’d gone – the coincidences in the dream – that hinted he was seeing the myth enacted, it had suggested to him he should enter the water; but she had instead. Had some cruel god been asking for sacrifice? He didn’t know; he remembered the sudden strange feeling of dread he’d felt when looking in, that made him shrink from the bank. No – it was coincidence, pure coincidence. But something strange had been going on, was going on; the walls between dream and reality were fading; his fragile grip on reality seeming to be altering; is it my mind that is collapsing or just the laws of time and space - melting into a quantum state of holographic unity? he wondered. Even such a question seemed mad. If someone is trying to tell me something, then who and what and why? Or had whatever it was, perhaps even he himself, sought to warn him years ago, to no avail – a cry from a future desperate to change the course of action that had led to disaster? Then why speak in riddles and myths? Why not just put it plain?
Shen was still waiting for him to finish talking.
‘Oh, fuck this queue,’ he said, frustrated. ‘Let’s catch up later, I think I need to go and lie down or something.’ And it was his turn to walk away without looking back, raising a hand when she shouted out after him.
Chapter 33: The Fort of Emrys
The low cloud that had cooled the morning had lifted, and as the three friends made their way to the north-west quadrant the sun cast crisp blue shadows on the long grass, freshly sprouted. There was a renewed heat to the day, promising to echo that of two days previously when the friends had arrived under unseasonably warm skies.
The circle was a hive of activity; groups of cap-wearing workmen gathered about the sides of the ditch, while a number of special guests, including Flinders-Petrie, and sight-seers, unconnected to the excavations or reconstructions had been attracted by the promise of some kind of show, and the general hub-bub of excitement. These included both local villagers from both Avebury and the Kennet villages south of the river, as well as walkers and those who had chosen to stop here on their way to more distant destinations, giving the goings-on an almost holiday-like feel, in which Keiller, strutting about manically, was the tweed-wearing master of ceremonies.
Rather than give a long speech, Keiller merely waved at the assembled crowd and advised they keep their distance, though thanking them for their interest. After twenty minutes of fixing ropes to the freshly cleaned stone lying on its side, the work of lifting began.
The stone, to the delight of the crowd, lifted a few inches on each of the first dozen attempts, but after a while the act of levering, though visually impressive, with its large wooden levers, blocks, ropes and pulleys, seemed to lift the stone in smaller and smaller increments, and a few of the assembled crowd began to drift away and seek a more sheltered part of the circle.
Tolkien, Barfield and Lewis watched in silence, with the sense that they were witnessing an event the likes of hadn’t been seen in this place for thousands of years.
Then there was a sound like a gun-shot and one of the ropes holding the stone flailed to one side, causing two of the workmen to be thrown to the ground; the stone, that had been raised but three or so feet twisted on its axis churning a deep cut out of the turf and fell back to the floor with a ground-shaking thud. The small crowd surged forward; Keiller strode forward to the stone, while Piggott went to the aid of the workmen, who were laughing but shaken. Flinders-Petrie stood to one side shaking his head and tapping his walking stick onto the ground impatiently. Beside him stood a small woman in, Tolkien guessed her sixties or seventies, her long grey hair tied back in a bun.
Petrie and Keiller exchanged a few words, and shook hands; the former then strode through the crowd with the lady following him, leaving Keiller seemingly torn between following the old man and returning to the re-adjustment of the ropes; Keiller was hopping from foot to foot, then throwing his hat on the grass he turned back to the stone, chagrined.
Lewis turned to Tolkien with raised brows; ‘This looks as if it’s going to take a while; shall we take a stroll?’
Tolkien nodded. ‘It does indeed; the process is rather too mechanical for me, anyway – ropes and pulleys, concrete – the ancients didn’t use concrete…’ he bristled, eyeing the sacks of the stuff lined up ready by the empty hole ready to secure the stone in place.
‘No..’ came a low female voice behind them; ‘…the blood of a fatherless virgin was much more effective!’
Tolkien turned, surprised; there, standing a few paces behind, was a burly and commanding figure of a woman, stocky in a high collared fur coat and woollen bonnet; his first impression was of a head mistress, but there was a spark in her dark eyes that betrayed a wit and fire; she smiled.
‘Violet Mary Evans, and this’… she gestured to a tall man at her side, ‘Dr Thomas Penry Evans. I was of course referring to rites long forgotten.’
Tolkien introduced his party swiftly; ‘I thought you were talking of Merlin.’
‘Yes, he’s part of the tradition. The old ones will demand a sacrifice if these stones are to stand.’
Tolkien ignored the wide-eyed look Lewis flashed him.
‘Let us hope not Mrs Evans.’
She smiled. ‘I see blood under the stones; perhaps this has already happened, so we are all safe from that fate today.’
The three friends shared uneasy looks, and Lewis fought hard not to betray a smile. All the while the grey eyes of Mrs Evans coolly observed them, creasing at the edges at the men’s discomfiture.
The stalemate was broken by Owen Barfield, who took a step forward and introduced his party to the new arrivals.
‘We are here by accident, it seems – we had meant to be already long gone.’
‘Back to your dreaming spires?’
‘Porlock; that is we intend to arrive in Porlock in a few days’ time but we have been delayed; we should, by now, have been way past Calne – perhaps we may have even reached Wells by now. And we would have been in Glastonbury in the next day or two.’
Mrs Evans smiled.
‘Deo non fortuna…’ she quipped; ‘God not luck; you shall still be in Glastonbury – it is where we two are headed and we have room in our car for all three of you if you wish to take me up on the offer.’
‘Why that would be most kind!’ beamed Lewis. ‘Only we must first let our host know – we had arranged to stay this night and all our belongings are in the boarding house…’
‘Don’t worry. There is no rush. We would have driven past but I was tiring and we had thought to stop a few hours and perhaps set off again after tea…’
Barfield had stood silently since the offer had been made with a curious expression playing across his features as if he wished to say something but was holding back.
‘A fatherless virgin you said…’
Mrs Penry Evans turned and smiled.
‘Indeed.’
‘It’s just that Professor Tolkien here was asking some questions regarding the stones and Merlin just last night.’
Tolkien shifted uneasily from foot to foot; Owen was clearly wishing for Tolkien to take up his story, and he so hated being put on the spot.
Tolkien coughed and mumbled;
‘I was thinking of the name Marlborough and its derivation from Merlin’s barrow; it refers to the smaller cousin of Silbury in the grounds of Marlborough school – however, it just struck me as odd that in Geoffrey of Monmouth Merlin is credited with the building of Stonehenge; I wondered if perhaps a similar tale was once told of this place, too. Perhaps the later enchanter’s name has been inserted in a very ancient story that spoke of the origins of all such sites.’
‘Merlin, I believe, was a title rather than a given name.’ Mrs Penry Evans stated flatly. ‘The one who built these monuments first bore that title, one that many men later claimed. You see it means ‘man from the sea’ and the first Merlin did indeed come from over the sea and brought the wisdom to build these sites with him.’
Man from the sea… Tolkien bit his tongue; he half-agreed – the name stemmed from the old name for Carmarthen, Moridunum, the fort by the sea – and probably meant ‘the man from Moridunum’, the equivalent of calling himself ‘Bloemfontein’…
Lewis, who was becoming more his old self as the day progressed, turned to Tolkien and raised an eyebrow. Tolkien ignored him.
‘Geoffrey does say that Merlin brought the stones from Killaraus in Ireland, I’ll give you that,’ Tolkien relied; ‘but I’ve been having a long think on the matter…’ he paused, wondering whether to continue. Lewis gave Barfield a look that said here we go… while the Penry-Evans’ were looking at Tolkien with genuine interest.
‘Geoffrey’s name for Merlin is Merlin Ambrosius, or Myrddin Emrys, if we use the Welsh.’ Tolkien cleared his throat again and looked at the floor, before raising his head and flashing a quick smile.
‘Stonehenge is near Amesbury and that name is thought to derive from Ambrosius Aurelianus, the 5th century war leader and victor at Mons Badonicus – but maybe the name is older…’ he grinned again ‘and belongs not to the town but to the Stones; Amesbury being simply the town closest to the Fort of Ambrosius – a rather poetic name for Stonehenge. Of course, it is no fort, but ‘bury’ often also means burial place of barrow, such as here at Silbury. And if Ambrosius is Merlin Ambrosius, or Myrddin Emrys, then the name Emrys’bury’ is more than fitting for a site said to have been built by Merlin as a grave-marker for the Britons slain by the Saxons.’
Lewis, who had feigned disinterest, had found his interest suddenly piqued. ‘Bravo, Tollers! I’d never thought of that.’
‘Oh it gets better, Jack! Due to the law of mutation in the Welsh language an m mutates into a v meaning that both Avebury and Amesbury could arguably derive from Emrys’ burial place. The coincidence of that suggests we’re not looking at a name based on a 5th century warlord, but an earlier derivation from a precursor to the Merlin Ambrosius of legend, who lent his name to both sites, way, way back in prehistory when both sites were built.’
‘You’re saying that Stonehenge and Avebury once bore the same name?’ Lewis asked, seeking clarification for his friend’s bold statement.
‘Yes, I am. The burial place of Emrys.’
Mr Penry-Evans, who had taken a back seat throughout the discussion, now stepped forward, and said, in a sing-song South-Walian accent.
‘of course, you may wish to claim him for your own but Merlin, or as we should more properly cal, him Myrddin Emrys was a Welshman, as I’m sure you know. And he was taken to a place named Dinas Emrys in North Wales to be sacrificed so that the collapsing castle of King Vortigern would stand; but before his blood was shed he discovered the true cause – the red and white dragons fighting in a cave beneath the castle…’
Just then the stone which had been hauled up again a couple of feet fell back to the earth with a grinding thud.
‘There’s your collapsing castle, Mr Penry Evans!’ Tolkien laughed. ‘Such a tale is often used to explain the precarious condition of standing stones… and as for your Dinas Emrys – does not this also mean ‘fort of Ambrosius’ as do Amesbury, and, as we have just concluded, Avebury? In reminding us of the story of Dinas Emrys, good Sir, you have demonstrated that this is yet another version of the same myth! Perhaps before being set in the fastness of Snowdonia the Emrys myth was set within a ring of collapsing stones in Wessex… a Bronze Age myth carried from here to the mountain refuges of the fleeing Cymru…’
‘Except for one difference…’ the jovial Welshman added, seemingly not chagrined at a national myth being so bowdlerized by the stocky Sais, ‘according to the Welsh triads Emrys was said to be buried at Dinas Emrys; you see, before Geoffrey of Monmouth we are perhaps looking at an original tale where the youth did not survive – where, unlike Merlin, he was killed and the stones were indeed cemented by his blood. If this place is Dinas Emrys, perhaps Merlin lies waiting to be discovered here?’
‘I say wouldn’t that be marvellous!’ It was Keiller – who had approached during Penry Evan’s rejoinder. ‘Apologies for interrupting but I am a sucker for old folklore and legends, and I’m afraid I only caught the tail end of this particular exposition!’
He grinned at them all, clutching his hat in his hands.
‘Might I be so bold as to ask if you would all wish to resume this topic over a sherry and luncheon tonight at the Manor? I do so miss decent conversation! There is room at the Manor should any of you wish to stay.’
Before the logistics of possible leaving times and driving arrangements could be discussed Mrs Penry Evans fixed the school-boyish man with her matronly eyes, and strode forward and took his hand; she smiled slowly. ‘Yes, that would be perfect.’
‘Well this seems a bit of luck,’ Lewis said as an aside to Tolkien. ‘We don’t have to pack; we get an invitation to a dinner, and a lift in the morning to our destination without having to break sweat.’ The latter man nodded, but it was Barfield who answered. ‘Not luck, God, as the lady said. Deo non fortuna.’
‘But which God?’ Lewis asked, as the sprightly capricious Keiller hopped away back to where the workmen were seeking to re-attach the ropes to the stone;
‘this place seems full of them.’
‘Was Emrys a god, originally, do you think?’ Barfield asked Tolkien.
The latter scratched his chin. ‘One god or two.’
‘Why so?’ Lewis asked, frowning.
‘You see, I don’t see how the original Emrys would derive from Ambrosius…a Roman name, if the naming of these sites predates the Roman period. The original name, which later became Emrys, ought to be closer to the Ave or Ame remembered in the place names, and as far as I can see there’s just one candidate…’ he paused for effect.
‘He does this on purpose, Owen.’ Lewis said, irritated, poking Tolkien with his walking stick.
Tolkien laughed. ‘Think – the killing of the youth to keep the stones from falling, it’s clearly a foundation sacrifice, and such legends are usually old creation myths twisted out of shape or half-remembered. Like the Greek Titans who become the earth; Emrys’s killing is a cosmogonic act – and the nearest we have in the Old North is the killing of Ymir, the giant.’
Lewis’s ears pricked up at the mention of Nordic myths, his childhood favourite.
‘From Ymir's flesh the earth was formed,
and from his bones the hills,
the heaven from the skull of that ice-cold giant,
and from his blood the sea…’ he intoned. ‘Ymir’s bury…Amesbury… Good God, man! It does seem to fit!’
’And Ymir means...?’ Tolkien asked, as if testing his students back in Merton College.
Lewis shrugged. ‘I ought to know, I’m sure it’s been discussed.’
‘Twin.’ Tolkien said. ‘It means Twin.’
Chapter 34: A serpent in Paradise
Two days before at this hour Con had sat in the sanctuary on Overton hill; now he sat in the shade of a great sarsen stone, one of a pair that marked the opposite end of the Avebury complex; if the sanctuary was the serpent’s head then Con now sat at its tail, beside Adam, a small distance from Eve, the last remaining stones of what had been called the Beckhampton Avenue.
He had left Shen outside the museum. The memories of Melissa had upset him; he needed time alone to think, and so he had made his excuses and left.
The sun was high, and there was little breeze. The cool of the early day had lifted, and as he walked along the newly mown cornfields swifts screeched overhead. The main circle had been busy; a few tourist coaches had arrived, and Wolf’s pagan friends had continued their gathering – having eaten and drunk at the pub they had gathered in the southern half of the circle where the great obelisk had once stood and were drumming and singing. It was this that had driven Con to walk the opposite direction; the fields running along the former Avenue were deserted; save for Adam and Eve no single stone remained of this half of the avenue, hence its unpopularity with visitors; and to his shame Con in all his visits here had not made this particular trip.
Adam was the largest of the two stones, the last remaining of a four-strong rectangular cove of stones that had marked the end of the Avenue, while Eve, a smaller pillar, was part of the avenue – and ironically, thought Con, was of the male pillar type stone of which half the Avenue consisted, the other being the vulva-shaped diamond stones.
Man and woman, he though - that divine pairing, the great opposites in the perennial war, the battle of the sexes. It’s that war which dominates most people’s lives, he thought, nestling into the stone trying to get comfortable in its shade, not good and evil, life and death. Here, set in stone, walking, no, dancing along the avenue, it was celebrated: the great war of misunderstanding and the interplay of love and lust that drove the creation of the human species. Women on one side and men on the other.
He sat upright and rolled himself a cigarette.
Are the stones paired or opposites, he wondered. But how was he supposed to know how Neolithic man had thought? Were the great rows of stones humans or gods?
Con scrabbled round his pockets for his lighter – an ergonomic smooth silver one that had been a gift from his sister. He took a deep drag and exhaled. On the side of the lighter, engraved, was the word Puck.
‘You still in there, Puck?’
Her voice.
A lifetime ago.
And his grumbling return: ‘I told you not to call me that.’
Puck.
It had been a different Con. Yet here he was, walking the same places, seeing the same vistas, through the same eyes, yet not his. Theirs. Over twenty years before.
Stepping off the train at Bristol, with their rucksacks – his weighed down with their tent – hers with her mandolin strapped to the back; excitedly finding the bus that would take them to Glastonbury. Gods – it had been magical – that summer between their O and A level exams – 17 years old, and full of the promise that youth offered, and travelling – having picked out the sites that Melissa had identified as ‘magical’; Glastonbury first, then they’d go to Stonehenge and then Avebury.
It came to him now in flashes of memory – the first enchanting view of Glastonbury Tor rising like a pyramid over the slate-grey levels, faded with morning mist; the shops, heady with incense, and tie-die clothes – a strange aesthetic of east meets folk-soaked west, that Con found too rich for his tastes. Then to sit on the Tor, that castle of winds, back to the tower, watching the sun go down – long-haired hippies on each side, chanting, drumming; it felt almost laughable, like a joke – someone’s idea of a 60’s fancy-dress party…
‘The drums…’ one man had said to him, ‘just belong here, you know?’.
No. He didn’t know. He felt awkward; yet then the rhythmic thumping took him somewhere beyond thought, and he realised he did know. And the words of a poem Mel had taught him sang out in his head
I am a stag of seven tines
I am a flood across a plain
I am a wind on a deep lake…
The night before – having packed their gear, almost nauseous with excitement, she had spun on the spot, saying how they’d set up a shrine to Lord Frith (she’d been reading Watership Down) on the Tor… ‘and to Lady Moonlight… and you’ll be Puck and I’ll be Titania!’ she laughed.
‘The drums, Puck!’ she winked at him, just 24 hours later, gilded by the setting sun, ‘they just belong here, Man!!!’ and he could see she was in her element.
Puck and Titania. Two curly-haired teens, wide-eyed, one pair dark, the other blue, walking from sacred hill to sacred well; and ever, in her clutches, a copy of Robert Graves’s ‘The White Goddess’ – her Bible, as she called it. Her magical tome; a book of enchantments – a grimoire, and for him too – a much longed-for desire, a muse like those that had inspired Graves; teenage desires pent-up through shyness and insularity and channelled into an image of ideal femininity, and given voice as he looked skywards, neck cricked back, taking in the stars
Ceridwen; Inanna; Ishtar; Isis; Freyja; Danu
That night, in Avalon, the Tor now invisible against the darkness, she had sat by the gas-lantern and played a song she’d written to the lyrics of Graves’s translation of the Song of Amergin.
I am a stag of Seven Tines…
Three years later it was being played on Radio One. The White Goddess, her first properly recorded studio album, while not top ten, had, nevertheless, become a minor cult classic. Con was in the final year of his University degree in astronomy; but things had changed. And to think there had been a time when he’d dreamed of a goddess and a river of milk and seen it as a sign from Her… Jesus! How fucking mad had that been?
When had it changed? There was the academic pressure, for a start. The prohibition against making a statement that couldn’t be considered a proven fact. Also the sense that he had no idea who he was as an individual, so that now, separated from Mel for the first time in their lives, he felt a need to mark out his own territory and to proclaim his individuality. He had always been ‘one of the twins’ and now the very mention of that sickened him. But mostly it was a sudden sense he had had, one evening, walking in the woods near his digs – a sense of despair, of feeling he was born thousands of years too late… of hating modernity; of feeling he didn’t fit – that everyone else was in life and he was just an observer. He felt a great yearning for a past he’d never lived. He felt such isolation, watching his contemporaries swagger about within life with no difficulty; talking about sport and music and films, and their conquests… and he felt mute; the poems he’d learned with his sister offered no currency in that world, offered no advantage in finding his own goddess of flesh and blood.
That awful night he thought about leaving – leaving university – perhaps even leaving life… but caught himself in the act; a cold sweat flooded his body and he suddenly saw himself as this pale, repressed nobody; as hovering on the edge of madness, and in an act of despair he threw his past from him as if it were a venomous snake. At the same time, he threw himself into life, into modern music and all the delights of materialism. Mel didn’t like the change, calling him an ‘angry young man’ but he felt solid, suddenly, like he had become visible, real. His old books locked away, replaced by books on science.
One evening of the summer holidays when they were back home, their many rows reached a head.
‘But it’s bollocks, Graves made it all up.’ Con was saying, wagging a finger at the booklet of notes that Melissa had had printed for the inside of her White Goddess CD.
‘You don’t know that.’ She retorted, hurt.
‘He did – it’s all misinterpretation and bullshit; he’s making his own myths. It doesn’t mean it’s not valid as a system… it’s just not true.’
‘What is truth?’ she pouted.
‘Not. This.’ He said.
‘Puck…’
‘Don’t fucking call me that.’
‘Why are you being such an arsehole?’ she shouted, hurt.
‘I’m not. I just don’t believe in all this poetic, mystic shit anymore. I’m not a kid. It’s all airy-fairy bollocks. It’s just not true. It’s like all this goddess rubbish…’
‘Have you forgotten your dream?’ she said.
‘It was just a dream, Mel. I read an article on the whole 60s goddess movement – Graves, Gimbutas, the works – it’s all based on a phoney premise – there’s no evidence for some Great Goddess. It’s feminist propaganda.’
‘Then what are all those Neolithic female figurines of?’ she countered.
‘They’re not all female – and they could be anything… dolls…I don’t know, prehistoric porn…’ despite his fervour he felt odd hearing these academic statements pouring out from his own mouth – statements he’d baulked against when first he’d read them. And here he was, their words coming out of his mouth. But surely they were better than lies, than false evidence?
‘Well maybe they’re gods and goddesses…shared, like Adam and Eve…’
‘Except Adam and Eve…’
‘I bloody know Con!’
Con shrugged. ‘It’s just that you look at Indo-European myth and it’s pretty much creator gods, all the way down.’
‘Well it would be, wouldn’t it? It’s HIS-story Con, written by the victors…’
Con raised his eyes at her comment. ‘Oh please, Mel…HIS-story, really?! So, they just erased the goddess from the old myths? That’s very convenient...’
Mel shot him a glare ‘Yes, I think that’s precisely what happened. And why not?! You’ve managed it…’
He baulked at that, remembering three postcards of goddesses he’d bought on holiday in Greece, and put above his bed – long since removed and shoved into a cupboard, where he’d flinch each time he’d chance upon them, a twinge of shame, a reminder of a naive and wasted time.
She had lent forward and tried to touch his cheek, her own cheeks stained with her tears.
‘You still in there, Puck?’
Those times passed, and Mel and Con learned to get along again, at first by knowing what not to discuss, but later through accepting that their differences didn’t mean they didn’t still have that shared sense of ‘twinness’ they had always shared; one thing remained changed, though – she never called him Puck again. As he grew older, he mellowed. That anger that had been his attempt to grasp life with both hands, a life that had threatened to slip away unlived, faded as he felt more at home with normal modern life; he had relationships, jobs, and felt the easy mediocrity of his peers consume him. He no longer felt estranged, nor on some manic trajectory that would have set him among the stars, probably on antipsychotics or living in a shed in the woods with a gaggle of stray dogs.
Then came their visit to Bryn Celli Ddu. No longer irritated by her kookiness, he had, for a moment under that October sky, felt a glimmer of their early years, and instead of flinging it away from him like poison, had enjoyed the feeling, like one might linger over an old cherished photograph. But in the days that followed he had felt a change occurring; his own research, his beloved science, had started to illuminate facts about the site and the possible lore associated with it that seemed to open wider that faintest of cracks in his façade that had first appeared the night in Bryn Celli. Like the secret enjoyment of a guilty pleasure, akin to re-reading a favourite childhood book, he had allowed waves of old feelings to wash over him; and it was all okay, he told himself, because this was science… his research was based in fact – and if it suggested, somehow, Mel’s precious White Goddess may have been associated with these sites, then he was happy for her… though bemused for himself. For the first time in years he allowed himself to think of the dream – once a signpost of belief – now a signpost to provable fact – an alignment with the midwinter sun, the archaeologically proven link between sun and horse in prehistoric iconography… and the image of the Milky Way, suggesting an alignment he could validate using plans and computer software.
Last spring he’d come back – back to Avebury, where, following their journey to Glastonbury as teenagers, they had arrived that glorious summer of ’88, walking the Avenue to the circle, marvelling at its size, a site, prior to the internet, they had only seen in old books. There, aiming to sleep the night in the circle, they had walked and walked, until they found themselves on the north-east part of the great bank, looking out over the circle, under a spray of stars – the summer night warm and without even a breeze; the earth was hard and cracked under Con’s fingers; the grass thin and parched.
‘Somewhere out there some poor woman is destined for you, Puck.’ Mel had said.
‘Charming!’ he’d scoffed, but inside he’d felt as if he’d inhaled a ball of pure happiness, that fizzed and sparked, and he’d lifted his eyes heavenwards and felt like crying with the joy of it.
None more blessed than the triple goddess He mouthed.
Coming back last year had been like a pilgrimage; an admission that something within him had altered; that the frosty, flint-hard Con had begun to thaw – and that somewhere, deep within, the wild-haired, open-eyed Puck might re-emerge, no longer afraid of not fitting in. For, he now reasoned, had not his disgust at modern life, his feeling of being at odds with his peers, originated in a genuine value judgement of western living that had reckoned it as lacking? Was not his baulking at the dull everyday life of his peers a visceral qualitative judgement – one he could not help but feel? As a teenager it had troubled him greatly, and he had thought the fault had lain within himself – but had not Melissa and himself, through their love of the old poems, just chanced on a better way of seeing the world – one that was animistic in character – almost mystic in its vision in which all was Holy, the trees, the birds, the rivers and streams. And to come back here, having resumed after over a decade’s break, his old vegetarian lifestyle, willing to look about him at stone, stream and star and see reflected in it, no, present within it, some unseen pattern, the hand of not pure scientific chance, but the cool, white hand of that goddess who had been lost to him… and to find her, or so it had seemed, in Shen…brave enough, now, to follow the demands of his soul, and not to run scared from an internal voice that demanded he be different…
Melissa had died. And Con had found himself cast from one extreme to another. Wishing, above all, to feel they might have been connected, that the old ways of thinking might be true – but being thrown again and again upon the spear of misery and doubt; of ‘truth’ that said, no, there was no connection, no meaning; she had died and he was implicated, if not directly, then indirectly in her death through acts not done rather than done. And the dream and the pursuit of its meaning had been but pipedream; a childish game, allowing his objectivity to slip out of some misguided sense of nostalgia. He hated himself. Hated all that seemed to remind him of these mistakes. He had lost a sister; he had lost his love and now, for the second time, he had lost himself, his true self: Puck; the wild-eyed boy who might dance under the stars. Lost, but not forever, he reasoned. Just trapped again, imprisoned, like the sun; trapped in the cave; crushed under the stone – and any sense of life and joy, trapped, gagging, in the throat, unable to be released, kept captive by circumstance and fear. Trapped in the coils of the flint-hard persona that Con had become.
I have forgotten how to just be me. And when I do feel him rising, I fight against it as one would fight down nausea; scared of what might emerge. I pull down the stones on my own head.
Suddenly he thought of the roughly clad men in the print in the restaurant, pulling ropes muddy with slimy dirt; sweating and cursing against the crude stones; it was an image at odds with the name of the two stones by which he sat – Adam and Eve; Eden, the place of creation, where the divine substance poured into the world – where the serpent bought wisdom, and where god walked in the cool of the day… paradise.
Con looked at Eve leaning in the afternoon haze. And I would have my Eve if ever she would want me; oh life! Sometimes the opposites were hard to bear; he imagined Shen dancing between himself and Hayden, in a long white robe, flowers in her long dark hair, flitting between the opposites; Hayden representing all that he previously had been, his words that night at the pub so easily could, just a couple of years ago, have been Con’s own. But which, amongst these opposites, Con asked, is the god, and which the demon? I see him as the bastard, the evil one – the serpent in paradise, but it is I who are static, whose life lies dead in me like a dried husk.
I, thought Con, am the serpent; I am Vrtra.
Chapter 35 The Wave
‘I see your appetite is coming back’ Barfield quipped as Lewis began tucking in to his ham and eggs.
‘I have some catching up to do’ was Lewis’s reply as he lifted a laden fork to his mouth.
Tolkien and Barfield had ordered bread, cheese and pickles, along with most of Keiller’s labourers, who now filled the Red Lion to overflowing.
Mr and Mrs Penry-Evans had followed Lewis’ example, explaining they had left London at eight that morning and hadn’t stopped even for a cup of tea.
‘We were following the Great West Road had meant to stop at Stonehenge,’ Violet said, ‘even though I often think it an unwelcoming place, but we found it somewhat overrun with certain undesirable individuals and so we decided to carry on to Devizes and stop here – a rather impromptu decision, and hardly on our route, but worth, I think, the detour, don’t you, Tom?’ she added, petting the hand of her partner.
‘Undesirable?’ asked Lewis.
‘Yes; a group of fascists - they’d passed us after we had left London, they were on motorcycles, driving like devils and nearly forcing us off the road. They had armbands on, with the BUF logo on it – how dare they use the colours of our flag to create that damn abomination!’
Mr Penry-Evans continued the tale.
‘Well, there must have been nearly a dozen of them, clambering over the stones; Violet wanted to tell them to leave but I didn’t advise it. It is enough to have to deal with that sort of behaviour in London – though things have been better of late since their failed demonstration.’
Mrs Penry-Evans poured herself another strong cup of tea and returned to her ongoing conversation with Tolkien.
‘So you think the serpentine shape of the temple here is what is really meant by the discovery of the fighting dragons in Merlin’s story?’ She asked.
‘I think it has to be considered.’ Tolkien said, shrugging. ‘But I’m not as convinced as Stukeley was over the serpentine form…But what has to be fathomed is, if the pair of dragons, at least in later versions, represent the conflict between Welshman and Saxon, if we are forced to look beyond the Dark Age date when Geoffrey believed the tales to be set, and go further back in time – what might this conflict represent? Perhaps a clash between earlier cults? The Neolithic circle-makers vs the Bronze Age metalworkers on their steeds, for example?’ his mind flashed back to two days prior, seated on the barrows of the horse-lords overlooking the Kennet valley; ‘After all, who leads the attack in the medieval version but Hengist and Horsa, stallion and horse – might these pair have been attached at a later point upon an earlier prehistoric myth of the taking over of these sites by the horse-riders? And if, as your husband says, Emrys originally died, might we be seeing the death of a native priest or leader at the hands of the new arrivals? Might a prehistoric Merlin have really existed and been killed at such a site?’
'It’s an interesting idea.' she said.
'And we see such conflicts in many myths –' Tolkien continued, 'the Aesir vs. the Vanir in Norse mythology, the gods vs. the titans in Greek. It’s one set of gods taking over the role of an earlier – usually the earth and fertility gods being overcome by the new gods, the Olympians, the warriors. Now, the trouble with such an interpretation is that one might also define the struggle as a seasonal one – the gods of summer achieving victory over winter, and freeing the fertility the winter has imprisoned….’
‘But cannot it be both?’ Barfield suggested; ‘a new cult using the old myth of seasonal victory to justify its subjugation of the old?’
Tolkien nodded. ‘Yes, that is true – the question is how one might distinguish between them in such a case… it is tempting, here, where we know one cult overtook another, to read the myth in terms of history, and Merlin as the defeated priest of the circles.’
'I, too, see Merlin as a priest of a very old religion' Mrs Evans stated.
'How old is old?' Lewis asked.
She paused for a second before answering. 'Atlantean.'
'And on what evidence would you base such a wild statement?' Lewis asked, snorting, clearly incredulous of the idea.
Violet Penry-Evans smiled.
‘Oh, nothing that would satisfy an academic such as yourself, Professor Lewis,’ she said. ‘I refer to a number of occult traditions, traditionally handed down in the West rather than to any historical source.’
‘That is a given, I would say, seeing as the only historical source one could refer to is Plato’s Timaeus, and that is an allegory. His Atlantis is a myth and I suppose will remain so until some deep-sea explorer finds temple ruins in the Atlantic, beyond the Pillars of Hercules.’ Lewis answered.
‘To those adepts of the occult tradition, what we call the Western Mystery Tradition, Atlantis is a given – not something to be confirmed by finding pillars on the sea bed, but through experience.’
‘Such as?’
‘Dreams and visions,’ she looked wistful. ‘I have dreamed of the destruction of the great temple of Cerne, and of a great wave sweeping over the land. And this was not something I had read, no! The dream of the wave engulfing the land I first had when I was four years old; and it has never left me.’
Tolkien blanched. Lewis snorted. Barfield took a sip of his beer then spoke.
‘You’ll have to forgive Professor Lewis, Mrs Evans; he has a great interest in occult tradition, but cannot bring himself to examine its claims with anything like the scientific open mind he possesses for other topics; he’s a man standing on the shore of a great ocean, wishing to swim but daring not even put a toe in the water!’ he winked at Lewis. ‘Do not mistake his attitude as snide cynicism; it is a defence against temptation…’
‘Balderdash, Owen. All our discussions on occultism and your peculiar attraction to the theories of Steiner have not altered my opinion one jot,’ Lewis countered, flustered at his friend’s comments. ‘I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – Steiner is a great man to consult about manure but not about metaphysics!’
Barfield chuckled. ‘Steiner’s interest in organic farming stems from his thoughts on the Atlanteans, whom he saw as possessing what you would call a magical affinity with plants and the natural world as a whole.’
Lewis swallowed his beer and shook his head. ‘Poppycock, Owen.’
Mrs Penry-Evans was regarding Barfield with interest.
‘So you’re an anthroposophist? I admit I find many of Steiner’s ideas intriguing.’
Barfield nodded. ‘I find his work challenging and stimulating; he does not, for example, seek to root Atlantis in conventional history; rather he offers an alternative view of the past; a different idea of creation altogether, with mankind eventually coalescing into solidity from a creature of mist and air, almost.’
‘Yes,’ Mrs Penry-Evans said ‘he suggests we look at creation in another plane, and that gradually mankind entered the material plane from a higher spiritual one. And Atlantis belongs to that higher state, hence the futility of looking for underwater ruins…’
As Barfield and Mrs Penry-Evans delved deeper into anthroposophical metaphysics Lewis turned to Tolkien who had been listening intently to what the others had been saying.
‘Creatures of mist and air, eh? I suppose as a myth it’s as good as any, worthy of the pre-Socratics, hmm? But it certainly says nothing about the real foundations of this world.’
Tolkien looked at him sidelong.
‘Do you really think that, Jack? Myth is not some arbitrary story plucked out of thin air; there is an undercurrent in myth that is rooted in a reality far more meaningful than mere history.’
Lewis nodded. ‘Yes, I was being flippant, I suppose, Tollers; one has only to think of the myth of the dying and rising godman, a precursor of the life of Christ, to see that. So, Atlantis, you would say, was true - in a mythical sense?’
Tolkien nodded. ‘Indeed. Is not the destruction of Atlantis also the Fall from Eden – the fall from a state of grace thanks to a deed that sought to acquire wisdom for the sake of power? The men of Atlantis were accused of hubris; of seeking to control the elements, with forging a science that upset the balance of the natural world and brought about disaster; these myths are complimentary, Atlantis and Eden.’
‘But then, as I said, not historical.’
‘Perhaps they were; how are we to know? Perhaps when one goes far enough back there is no difference – perhaps history, as we understand it, the hard world of facts, really is somehow new, coalesced out of something other…’ Tolkien’s eyes seemed to fog over. In his head he was seeing the dream he had had since childhood – a vast towering wave bearing down over green fields, destroying everything in its wake. And this lady, too, he was thinking, shares the dream. Are we dreaming the same myth, plucking the same fruit from the tree of the imagination, or are we seeing glimpses of something that really happened – and if so, how? A message sent from the past, or a memory from some past existence?
Tolkien’s eyes refocused to find his gaze met by Mrs Penry-Evans.
‘Professor Tolkien – tell me what you are thinking.’ She said.
He hesitated, but then seemed to find his voice as he filled his pipe.
‘The Atlantis myth has always…fascinated me; I have, I am embarrassed to say, have been haunted by a nightmare since childhood; a dream… your dream.’
Mrs Penry-Evans nodded. ‘I sensed it, which is why I asked. Merlin was a priest who escaped that destruction, I believe. It’s in his very name: he is Merlin, from an original Myrddin – 'he of the fortress in the sea'; and his companion was Morgan: 'born of the sea'.’ Her eyes seemed to be peering over distant shores; distant in both place and time.
‘And they came here, you say?’ asked Lewis, sounding sincere, as if wanting to atone from his earlier mocking stance.
‘I think they brought their wisdom out of the drowned land and established it here; in the west; I believe they founded ancient Avalon, when it was still an island in the inland sea. We have our own Atlantis legends here in the west, you know – tales of Caer Ys and lost Lyonesse; tales of haunting beauty ’
And the great kings of Wessex
Wearied and sank in gore,
And even their ghosts in that great stress
Grew greyer and greyer, less and less,
With the lords that died in Lyonesse
And the king that comes no more.
Violet Penry-Evans recited – the very lines of Chesterton Tolkien had intoned above the Hakpen horse two days before.
‘And you think this knowledge was placed in temples such as these?’ asked Barfield, gesturing out of the window at the stones. ‘Encoded, somehow?’
‘As Professor Tolkien said earlier – these sites were built by Merlin, they bear his name - Emrys. So perhaps written into the stones themselves is a memory of the flood, and a record of the knowledge that was lost to it.’
An image floated up in Tolkien’s imagination – that Irish myth of the flooding of the river Boyne after Boann had sought to obtain the wisdom from the well of Nechtan… that, surely, was another example of the hubristic search for knowledge that had led to disaster – a disaster taking the form of a flood. That myth had been writ large in the place names hereabouts, the name of Sulis, the goddess of the sun-eye, remembered in hill and well; but was this myth, the drowning of Boannd, myth, pure myth, or a memory of some historical fall? Was it a myth of creation or some dimly recalled history? Or might it be both? Mrs Penry-Evan’s description of Merlin bringing the knowledge of the drowned temple of Atlantis to these lands after the flood seemed on the one hand wishful thinking, an occult fiction, yet there was a connection here he couldn’t quite fathom: Why, he asked himself, do I dream of that same flood? What is it that drives me? A need to rediscover what has been lost? My goal has ever been to recreate, to retell our lost mythical past; the lost myths of England that didn’t survive the coming of Augustine or the Norman Conquest, and so I looked to see what I could uncover. And that’s how it seems: recovery – not invention; I’ve always felt as if I’m rediscovering some long-forgotten truth; an archaeologist of myth Owen called me. But my search isn’t just a dry academic venture; strange though it sounds, I feel as if I’m trying to remember home; I’m trying to find a place I belong. Hiraeth, the Welsh call it, a kind of longing or homesickness; only this is a wish to return to a place I have never been – never could have been, for it was lost to the flood aeons ago, before the world was reshaped, and the straight road bent…
Chapter 36 Twinned
‘Read this!’ Con said, pushing the yellowed paper along the table in front of Wolf. Wolf frowned, screwing his eyes up.
‘Can’t you read it out to me I’ve got a fucker of a headache.’ Wolf had been drinking most of the afternoon, and had ended up half dozing on one of the beer tables outside of the pub; his shaven head was a vicious shade of pink, the wolf skin, now by his side on the bench, had afforded some protection, but the late afternoon had proved too hot to wear it and Wolf had been too drunk to care.
‘Where the fook’s Ananda?’ he asked, scratching his stubbled cheeks. Con shrugged and sipped his beer while a fly lazily danced about Wolf’s half empty lager.
‘Go on, sorry mate. I shouldn’t have dropped off I feel like cack now. What is it?’
‘It’s one of Tolkien’s letters, the ones Shen had’ said Con, who felt odd reading aloud in this public place.
‘My dear Edith…’ he began…
My Dear Edith,
My apologies for the delay in writing; indeed, I have yet to send your first letter and so it seems you shall receive these two together….
‘Right,’ Con continued, deciding to paraphrase instead of reading the letter verbatim, ‘he’s saying they were delayed as Jack, that’s C S Lewis, was unwell – but they’ve got a lift to Glastonbury off a woman named Penry-Evans and her husband – and that they’ll be heading there in the morning as the woman’s staying at the Manor now… right…here we are, listen to this…’
Wolf was listening, albeit with his face hanging over his arm which was laid flat on the table, his eyes half open, but aware.
‘What has struck me as important is that this place, unbeknown to me before now, is the obvious original location of the myth of Merlin…’
Wolf’s puffy eyes opened a fraction more at the mention of the enchanter.
‘…Merlin was responsible for both the building of Stonehenge and for uttering prophecies on finding the fighting dragons beneath the hill of Dinas Emrys in Snowdonia – but I am now of the opinion that both tales refer to neither of these locations but Avebury – my proof? None really save my usual linguistic follies – but Dinas Emrys and Amesbury, the location of Stonehenge, both mean ‘city or fort of Emrys’ Emrys being an old name for Merlin. Now, Geoffrey of Monmouth says that Stonehenge was built near Mons Ambrius, but there is no such hill at Stonehenge, which is set upon a level plain, and so it seems probable, given that the names Amesbury and Avebury are the same, both stemming from an early form of Emrys, that Mons Ambrius is Silbury. If it is not Silbury it may be the similar hill near Marlborough because Marlborough is the hill of Merlin – Merlin’s barrow. Surely Marlborough is Mons Ambrius, the hill of Emrys: Geoffrey of Monmouth may have known the tale referred to a stone circle in Wessex and chose the wrong one. The Merlin myth is based here, Edith. Initially I thought that this is why at Dinas Emrys he sees the vision of the fighting dragons, for as Stukeley pointed out Avebury resembles, to some extent, a giant serpent. But I’m not swayed by this; more indicative of the myth being set here is the font – with its two wyverns between a central figure. The font is early, probably contemporary with Geoffrey of Monmouth, and suggests the legend was known and associated with this place.
In the Merlin story the fighting dragons represent the Saxons and the Welsh – the legend seems to tell of a conflict, but I do not have the knowledge to understand what this particular part means. I am racking my brains to think if I can find anything more about this Emrys. Mr Penry-Evans has said that welsh myth records that Dinas Emrys was the site where Emrys was buried so perhaps in the original myth Merlin was sacrificed – and where might he be? Under the stones, no doubt, as a foundation sacrifice…’
‘Hmm. Go on’
‘That letter ends there, it wasn’t finished. The rest is in notes. Don’t you see what he’s saying?’ Con beamed, excitedly.
‘Useful. Fuck this isn’t helping my head, Con. Just give it to me in layman’s terms, I can’t work anything out at the moment.’
‘Okay – I’ll put it in terms a Yorkshireman will understand: the myth of Merlin, well, part of it – it’s based on this place.’
‘Yeah, I got that. That’s cool.’ If he really thought it was cool, he didn’t show it; he yawned and belched.
‘Remember yesterday in West Kennet? When Ananda was talking about foundation sacrifices and shit – you know, the giant Ymir whose sacrifice forms the world?’
Wolf nodded almost imperceptibly.
‘Hang on.’ Con said. He disappeared inside and re-emerged with a pint for himself and a coke and a packet of crisps for Wolf, who immediately set about stuffing his face and rehydrating.
‘You’re a fookin’ legend, man. Go on… I was listening…’
‘’Right… we mentioned that Old Man may have been some kind of Ymir, enacting the creation, yeah? Well the Merlin legend is all about foundation sacrifices, killing the youth so the stones will stay in place – it’s basically a folkloric retelling of the creation… from Ymir’s flesh the earth was made, whatever the line is… well, from Merlin’s flesh the stones, the henge, is made – in the form of the cosmos. And it’s set here – this is Merlin’s circle… listen…’
Con was excitedly flicking through the pages of notes, searching, while Wolf rolled a cigarette for himself and Con.
Con took the cigarette, and with it hanging from his mouth began to read from Tolkien’s hurried notes:
‘The wyverns: separated, like Marduk and Tiamat – The Mesopotamian god Marduk separates the serpentine primal gods, Apsu and Tiamat, and from them creates the world; sets Tiamat, salt-water, above as the Milky Way; Apsu, below as fresh water; the figure on the font with the crozier? Creation equals flood; Eärendil as the star presaging the flood; how did I stumble on this? What if the flood was in the heavens?”
‘Woah, woah…what?’ Wolf asked, his face scrunched up in confusion.
‘Umm…what bit?’
‘Murdoch or whatever.’
‘Marduk – it’s the Mesopotamian creation story, Marduk splits the two primal gods apart, and forms the world from them – they’re these monstrous kind of dragons, but he separates them, and they become the sky above and the abyss below. They’re like the earth and sky separated by the sun at the moment of sunrise from primeval night. Tolkien equated them with the dragons on the font in the Church.’
Wolf still looked bemused. ‘And that last bit – the star and flood?’
‘Eärendil – he’s one of Tolkien’s heroes in The Silmarillion;’ Con said, speaking not from the notes but from his own memory of reading the tales as a teenager; ‘he is seen as a sign in the heavens as hope for men after the flood destroys Numenor and Beleriand –.’
‘Forget all the Middle Earth shit for a minute…‘ Wolf said; ‘…go back to the Merlin stuff.’
‘Well,’ Con said, thumbing the notes again; ‘
”The Flood presaged by the appearance of the star – just as Petrie noted in Egypt, where Sirius presages the flooding of the Nile; might the rising of a star act as a precursor for a flood here at Avebury – but then how? How might one mark a flood in stone? How might Merlin have recorded this?”
‘then, bear with me…the writing gets even worse here - ah, here we go:
“Merlin: Emrys: What if Patriarch Petrie was right? I saw it clearly tonight at the Manor; despite his pomposity he is, at least, a font of knowledge. Marduk and Tiamat are linked to Nut. Obvious now I think about it; and the symbolism matches perfectly!!!”’
‘Nut?’ Wolf asked.
Con nodded, and tried to find the passage he’d seen earlier, that had shocked him awake.
‘The Egyptian sky Goddess Nut – here we go:
“Geb and Nut, divided at the start of time, like Apsu and Tiamat, one (Geb) falls to (become) the earth, the other, Nut, the sky…might Emrys fit this pattern – falling (becoming) stone and earth…?”
this bit’s a bit hard to read, as the handwriting goes a bit shit, but listen:
“The earth, foundation, and, like Geb and Nut a twin… like Ymir, Merlin - Emrys is a twin. Ymir’s-bury. But where, then, is his twin? Is she in the sky?”
‘Fuck me, Wolf – Merlin was a twin! Like me and Mel!’
Wolf looked at Con as if he was stupid.
‘Yep, I know. Like Ymir. I thought you’d have known that.’ Wolf said matter-of-factly, and with a slight smile that showed he was enjoying the fact he knew more than Con.
Ymir, Twin – yes, he’d come across that in his PhD studies… all these twins in Indo-European myths, representing the creation of duality from unity, or so he’d read, one being creates the dualistic world of opposites… but these were all male – all stemming from a proto-form ‘*Yemo’, from which the word Gemini originated, as well as Ymir. But Emrys? He’d never seen Merlin touted as one of their kind. Was it just a linguistic link or was there more to it? And why did Tolkien suggest his twin was female? Because Tiamat and Nut were female? Surely, he knew that the northern Twins were male. What was Con missing? He suddenly wished so hard he could just ring Mel and ask her. She would have known; Celtic was her thing. Con had never really read the books she carried around, relying on her readings and recitations of poetry. Had Graves mention Merlin was a twin? If he had Con didn’t remember; if Mel had read it, she would have mentioned it, wouldn’t she? If not in Graves, then where? And why was it suddenly vitally important that he should know?
‘Where’s it written?’ he asked Wolf.
Wolf chuckled, picking up his phone, and signalled Con to be quiet; after a few moments he began to speak to the person on the other end; ‘Hey… yeah…. well, no, actually – feel like a pig’s shat in my head. You in the van? Yeah, can you get me an ibuprofen from the glove box? No – actually, sod it, I’m going to come back and kip – see ya….
‘I’m sorry Con,’ he said, putting down the phone, ‘I can’t concentrate, I’m going to have a snooze.’
‘What about Merlin and the twin thing?’ Con asked again.
‘Ask me later, Professor…patience is a virtue, you know.’ Wolf said, waving him off. Con started to speak again but held his tongue, despite his mind burning with unasked questions.
He thought of Old Man in his glass prison, just a short walk away from where they sat – a man who yesterday they had argued may have been enacting the myth of Ymir, Twin, a creative sacrifice, and here was Tolkien arguing that Merlin may have been playing the same role. Merlin and his twin…but who was she, if indeed she was a she? He had a sudden memory of his conversation with Mel all those years before - the whole 60s goddess movement – Graves, Gimbutas, the works – it’s all based on a phoney premise – there’s no evidence for some Great Goddess. It’s feminist propaganda… and her response that her eradication had been the result of male-dominated societies; his own work had begun to suggest she had been correct; these ancient sites had seemingly been aligned on a sky identified in the past as a celestial goddess, and now Tolkien was suggesting something similar… where is his twin, is she in the sky? That was the question; and what’s more, where was she in myth? Had we in the west only been given half the story of our past, he wondered? Like being told of Adam but not Eve…
Wolf downed his coke and stood.
‘Where are you parked?’ Con asked.
‘Oh, down outside Shen’s. You coming down?’
Con nodded and finished his pint. ‘Will Hayden be there?’ he asked.
‘How the fuck should I know? I think he was working today, probably won’t be back.’ Despite his apparent bad mood Wolf managed a grin.
‘Why don’t you just tell her you like her?’
‘It’s not as easy as that. I feel bad.’ Con answered.
‘Bad? Because of Hayden? Look, mate – he’s a charmer, but underneath he’s a bit ordinary really – I don’t think they’re well suited; she needs more, I think.’
‘You think I can give her more?’ Con asked.
‘Honestly? Not at the moment.’
Con felt as if he had been stung.
‘Why?’
‘Because you’re still dealing with all that shit. You can’t really look after yourself, mate - how you gonna look after her? At least Hayden’s managing that. He can support her; she just needs someone with a bit more imagination; you have that, but you have no fire in your belly.’
As Wolf said these words Con felt a flash of anger. I do have fire, it’s just been a glowing coal hidden by cinders, he thought.
‘Look, I can see you’re fuming but you’re just locked inside. Get angry – let it out or it’s gonna chew you up and destroy you. Get some balls – I don’t know, get pissed, do some mushrooms, get in a fight – go and try to fuck someone – just not Shen; you’re not ready for her.’
Con’s heart was drumming and he felt as if he were blinkered, looking down through a tunnel.
‘I can’t – I’m stuck, I just keep thinking the same things over and over – I can’t escape from my thoughts… how can I do that? It’s more complicated than you know! You don’t see it all. I think I fucking love her but it’s ruined’ he blurted out.
‘Then tell me what I don’t know.’
‘I can’t - I’ve not told anyone; it just keeps going round in my head; I just can’t stop thinking about it.’
‘Just don’t think – act! And don’t ask yourself how as that’s just fucking thinking again!’
They had reached the edge of Church Street and Hayden’s bike was parked outside Church Cottage.
‘For fuck’s sake why can’t he just fuck off?’ Con spat and turned on his heels.
‘Where are you going now?’ asked Wolf.
‘Back to my van’ he shouted over his shoulder.
‘Ok – whatever you need to do – come along to the pub tonight, though – it’s my last night here. I’ll tell you about Merlin…maybe.’
Con raised a hand in acknowledgement, his middle finger extended.
He had only walked a few metres on when he almost walked into Hayden, who was exiting the post office with a loaf of bread and some milk.
The two men looked at each other and halted; Con would have walked by with a nod but he felt somehow he should stop. Hayden didn’t look overly enthused by the encounter either.
‘What’s up?’ Hayden said, removing one of his earphones. ‘I heard the chairman didn’t hand back the bones.’
Con shook his head, smiling at Hayden’s understatement.
‘No. Wolf said his bit but I don’t think there’s much more that can be done really.’ He shifted around awkwardly.
‘Anyway…’ Hayden said, motioning to leave, and starting to put his earphones back in ‘can’t keep She Who Must Be Obeyed waiting… probably catch you in the pub later, mate.’ And he raised his hand in a half-wave and set off towards Church Cottage. Con turned and watched him go.
Fuuuuuck! Con felt he wanted to scream – and it wasn’t all to do with Hayden and Shen; it was the whole Merlin thing that Tolkien’s letter had sparked in his brain. Twin? Why a twin?! And who was the other – the lost twin? He felt a horrible sense of becoming hemmed in, of the world twisting and becoming smaller, of disparate themes becoming enmeshed and tangled, closing him in… a tightening net or web of ideas and coincidences, connections and images – bordering on magical thinking, a feeling it was all linked – him, Shen, Mel, Tolkien, Merlin, the Old Man in the museum… the stones themselves somehow linked to the stars and a flood – the flood of the milky river in the heavens presaged by the rising of the stars; a sister, a lost sister, the forgotten twin – but not by me, he thought. And he picked up speed and began to run through the circle towards the Avenue, the circle and its many tourists becoming a blur, the fire in his head a burning madness he could not outrun, a converging point of echoes from before and after, from outside and inside time, spiralling inwards towards, towards, towards…what?
Chapter 37 The Manor
The bells of the nearby church chimed for eight o’clock at the exact moment Lewis rang the bell on the large wooden door of the Manor.
‘Impeccable timing, gentlemen’ Lewis beamed. There was a noise in the hallway the door was opened by a tall, thin man in a dark suit.
They were beckoned into the hall, but as the night had a slight chill they kept their jackets on and were lead into the library on the side of the house overlooking the gardens. The library was spacious, and new – dating from the start of the century, unlike the rest of the house which was Tudor.
Keiller had only been in the house just over a year but already the place was stacked with his belongings. The library was full to overflowing with leather-bound volumes, and here and there small pieces of interest lay on cupboards and tables: small Egyptian artefacts, flints, a prehistoric bronze axe.
Keiller had been sitting in a leather wing backed chair beside the fireplace, looking out over the garden where the moon was grazing the top of the fir-tree hedge. As his guests entered he turned and rose with a genuine smile, putting down the tumbler of whiskey he was holding and approaching each man with a hand-shake.
‘So good of you to come; one tires a little of the same company – archaeologists are a rather single minded lot and the conversation over dinner can be a little… predictable.’ He smoothed back his short grey-flecked hair and asked if the friends would like a sherry, or something stronger?
The butler returned with three glasses of whiskey.
‘Thank you Frazer’ he said. Frazer nodded and left.
‘While we’re waiting for our other guests, I’ll show you the house,’ Keiller said. He gestured for them to precede him into a room leading off the library: a room stocked with utilitarian cabinets looking almost medical in their spartan nature; angled wooden worktops were laid over some, and a large table at the centre also in the same dark wood.
‘The map room’ Keiller declared, walking over to a half-finished map on the drawing board closest to the window. He beckoned the men over.
‘Here you can see the north-west sector; here’s the trees we have cleared so far… and if you look here’ he lifted the map to expose another beneath full of other markings, ‘you’ll see what a job we’ve had to clear the site of trees. We started in early March so you see what you’ve been seeing is very much the tail end of the clean-up process.
‘This stone here is the one we’re raising at the moment – it was only buried under a couple of feet of soil; but you can see from the space here that we’ve not even begun to survey the rest of this sector yet. The lifting of this stone was very much a showpiece for both press and our eminent guest Sir Flinders Petrie.’
Keiller scowled momentarily and was about to go on but Lewis interrupted him.
‘How long is it going to take you to finish the circle?’ he asked.
‘Twelve years we think – that’s what we have budgeted for anyway. This season we’ll be dealing just with this sector – but there is so much more to do, and I don’t just mean digging and reconstruction; there’s cataloguing and publishing the finds; we have, of course, to find a permanent location for the museum...’
Just then the doorbell rang.
‘Ah, good… more guests – shall we?’ Keiller said, gesturing out of the map room.
They soon found themselves once more in the library; Tom and Violet Penry-Evans stood sipping their sherry looking over Keiller’s vast collection of books. Tolkien was looking with curiosity at a reconstructed clay vessel with a narrow waist and a wide mouth, like a small vase, but incised with regular bars of pattern.
‘Ah. Yes, this was found beside one of the stones in the avenue. It’s what we call a beaker, probably dates to 2000 BC. The beaker culture were the people who brought in metalwork from the continent: bronze wielding invaders with long skulls, riding horses, we think.’
Tolkien held the cup carefully. Had one of his horse lords from under the round mounds by the sanctuary once drunk from such a cup?
‘Before this,’ Keiller was saying ‘we find this type of pottery on site – Grimston-Lyles we call it, heavier, cruder perhaps, but with lozenge and spiral patterns – most entrancing…’ but was interrupted as the doorbell rang again. Frazer left his standing position at the side of the door and disappeared out of sight.
‘Who else is invited, I wonder?’ Barfield whispered to Tolkien. It was with a mixture of pleasant surprise and worry that the new guests were seen to enter.
First came the young archaeologist Piggott, smiling widely. Behind him, first revealed by a gruff voice in the hallway, was Petrie and with him the woman who had been at his side earlier that day at the stones.
‘Full house! Splendid!’ laughed Keiller. ‘Dinner will begin at half past eight.’ Tolkien glanced at his pocket watch: quarter past.
Until dinner was called Keiller worked the room, spending the majority of the time showing his Egyptian antiques to Petrie and his companion, who had been introduced as Margaret Murray.
‘My word,’ Lewis had said to Tolkien. ‘That’s THE Margaret Murray; an Egyptologist of some repute, recently retired, I believe from the University of London – but she wrote a book on witchcraft which I read and must say found rather hard to swallow.’
Tolkien glanced over at her; she had a long, kind face, her heavy eyelids and downward sloping eyebrows made her look sympathetic. She certainly seemed to be having a positive effect on the usually dour Petrie, who was laughing, his beard wagging.
Lewis chuckled, turning conspiratorially towards his two fellows.
‘This is marvellous; we have a pan-worshipping host, a guest who writes about witches and another who is an occultist who believes she once escaped from Atlantis. I foresee stormy waters ahead before the soup course is finished.’
***
Lewis was wrong; the cream of mushroom soup had been ladled from the terrine, eaten and the plates removed without so much a fractious word being spoken by any of the guests. But that was about to change.
The three friends had grown used to fine dining at Oxford, though Barfield found it more nostalgic, enjoying it far less often than he had; only Tom and Violet Penry-Evans seemed awkward. They had been placed beside each other facing the window of the large Georgian-style dining room, opposite Petrie, Miss Murray and Barfield; Tolkien sat beside Violet, opposite Barfield, while at the ends of the table sat Lewis, between Tolkien and Barfield, and Keiller and Piggot, rather tightly packed between Tom Penry-Evans and Flinders Petrie.
Frazer stood near the door, beside a polished wooden cabinet bearing a selection of bottles, walking to the table to refill the guests’ wineglasses when necessary.
They had talked so far about the excavation and of the state of British prehistory in general. Tolkien had eaten in silence, red faced when Petrie had begun again to mention the superiority of certain races of men, and the paucity of North-west European civilization compared with, say, Egypt. He had tried to steer the conversation away from such subjects and towards myth, wishing to question the assembled experts on certain aspects of creation myths.
‘It’s the symbolism of twins which fascinates me,’ Tolkien said, ‘in relation to creation legends. You mentioned the sky goddess Nut or Hathor yesterday, Sir, and I seem to recall from my reading that this goddess is a twin?’
‘Indeed, she is the sister of the earth-god Geb, who is serpent-headed, and depicted as falling from her embrace; he becomes the earth and she the sky.’
‘This particular Creation myth,’ Murray added; ‘the Heliopolitan myth, has a number of brother/sister pairings; each generation arises from the former, like a flower opening, having first risen from Atum.’
‘It’s just I was thinking of the symbolism of the creation in other Near Eastern myths, such as the separation of Apsu and Tiamat by the sun-god Marduk – the imagery seems linked.’ Tolkien explained.
Petrie leaned forward, slowly nodding – ‘A staple image from the ancient world, and no stranger to our own modern ears: “And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.” Genesis 1:7.’
Lewis eyed Tolkien, wondering what exactly lay behind his questions, but Tolkien gave nothing away.
‘Does one find many such correspondences between Biblical and Egyptian myth?’ Tolkien asked; ‘…such as the Flood?’.
Petrie considered while sipping his wine.
‘The Nile flood, of course, dominates Egyptian tradition, but that is strictly seasonal. As for a sea-flood, the only reference I am aware of, and one cannot escape the possibility of higher, Classical influence, is the building texts at Edfu… These texts purport to tell the story of the Primeval Ones who predated the Egyptians, who inhabited an Island of the Gods, but which was tragically engulfed by the sea forcing the Primeval Ones to come to Egypt bringing their knowledge with them and establishing the original temple, long destroyed and rebuilt, at Edfu.’
‘And Classical influence is likely, because…?’
‘Because of the date of the temple – it is Ptolemaic – Hellenistic – in date, increasing the possibility of influence from, say, Plato’s Timaeus. Had the myth been found elsewhere in Egypt, at an earlier site, we might give more credence to it as an Egyptian myth...’
Tolkien merely nodded, reasoning, silently, that Petrie would never easily have credited such a myth to an aboriginal civilization… of course he’d rather see it as an import from a ‘higher’ cultures…yet his answer had fuelled Tolkien’s thinking – here, too, a flood – but is it history or myth?
Presuming, rightly, given Tolkien’s questions, that the assembled guests would be interested in their work, Petrie and Murray continued to speak at length of the many excavations they had headed in Egypt, such as the labyrinth at Neqada that the Romans had reduced to dust.
‘Such sites get little recognition amongst the public, I am afraid, who are more interested in that second-rate tomb of Tutankhamun and ridiculous ideas of the mummy’s curse than in real archaeology.’
‘So, what do you think of the curse?’ asked Violet.
‘It is pure bunkum. I am surprised you had to ask. You think I’m the sort to give credence to such beliefs?’ he said.
‘Not at all;’ she replied, with a slight smile. ‘But the ancient Egyptians certainly believed in magic.’
‘Many ancient civilizations laboured under the delusion of superstition; it does not mean that we should.’
‘So, you admit your highly advanced Egyptians were superstitious? Does that not make them un-civilized, and if not, how do you tally their belief in magic with their supposedly high level of culture?’ It was clear to all assembled that Mrs Penry-Evans was baiting this bear of a man.
Petrie grimaced. ‘There belief in magic is, one must admit, a hangover from a more primitive time, but that does not negate the splendour and complexity of their art or architecture, for instance.’
‘Well, let us not immediately dismiss their beliefs.’ Violet said. ‘We cannot say for sure whether some human faculties, such as psychic abilities, may have atrophied over time, so their disappearance could be due to other factors than having ‘outgrown’ them in the sense of, say, outgrowing childish behaviour. You merely dismiss them as uncivilized because our modern western civilization, in its narrow-minded hubris, assumes it to be so simply because we no longer possess them; I believe the phrase is ‘sour grapes’. Perhaps an Egyptian curse might be effective today – even more so when acting upon us moderns who lack the appropriate knowledge of psychic self-defence.’
‘Psychic self-defence? My word. What absolute poppycock!’ He glared at Keiller, as if holding him solely responsible for his guests’ ridiculous questions.
Tolkien looked across at Barfield who was clearing his throat; he had the advantage of being on the same side of the table as Petrie and so was able to address his point to Violet Penry-Evans.
‘You have a very good point there Mrs Penry-Evans,’ he began. ‘We have a very narrow view of what our ancestors may or may not have experienced. We read The Iliad and interpret the appearances of the gods as poetic metaphors, or we read of the sightings of fauns or elves and take them as whimsy – but the sources from which we take these instances do not suggest anything but they are reporting actual experiences. Perhaps man’s consciousness was different, closer to that of the animals, perhaps in a semi-mystical state, more open to spiritual realities; a state we might well describe today as magical?’
‘Hear, hear!’ said Tom Penry-Evans in his sing song accent. ‘Exactly right, my man. When my Celtic ancestors talked of the fairy-folk they weren’t some Victorian winged fancy but beings of great power, and sometimes great size; the tales talk of interactions between them and mankind; are we right to dismiss this as fiction just because the majority of us are no longer as able to experience such events?’
Petrie was shaking his head. ‘Of course, we are right to dismiss them! Where is the evidence, the one shred of evidence that man once truly knew or experienced magic as a reality? Huh?’ he looked around the table and was just about to grunt as if to say ‘exactly’ when a voice challenged him.
‘Language.’
‘Eh, what was that?’ Petrie asked, cupping his hand to his ear.
‘Language’ Tolkien repeated.
‘Pray, go on…’ Petrie said, smugly.
‘The study of language,’ Tolkien stuttered, aware of all eyes on him, ‘reveals that from the earliest times it dealt not in abstractions but in such a way as to suggest the world it described was thought of as somehow more poetic and mystical than we now credit. It reveals our ancestors conceived of a world where everything was connected – magically connected, but that in time we have become severed from that older state of awareness and find ourselves alone in the world, cut off from nature.’
‘Give me an example. And for god’s sake speak more clearly’
It was Barfield who answered. ‘If I may, Tollers? The Latin word Pneuma: it means both spirit and breath and wind; one can posit a time when the speaker of that word did not have to identify which particular meaning he was referring to, as they were all one and the same; in other words, his world was connected, mystical – the very breath in his body was the spirit that animated him; the wind was the breath of God. Or the word Cereal which contains the name Ceres, harking back to a time when the wheat itself was the body of a god, orient and immortal’ he winked at Tolkien.
Petrie was shaking his head again. ‘Language proves nothing; just because old words had several meanings does not prove magic ever existed – or that man ever perceived the universe as different as we see it today.’
‘I’m afraid you’re mistaken. It does exactly that. How we perceive the world is directly based on our language,’ Barfield continued.
‘There is a world of difference between, say, ‘a tree’ and ‘a dryad’: one seems to be a label, dismissive, the other gives soul to the object, and who is to say that is wrong? Just the use of that word adds an extra dimension, and who are we to say it is not a true perception? Its reductionist to say we give it a soul by using such words – surely, we take away its soul when we fail to use the word.
‘And as our language today is fragmented, so is our view of the world. This is why we need to use metaphor to express spiritual or mystical concepts – we’re having to use it to reconstruct what was once inherent in the first words uttered by mankind, but which are now corrupt, fallen. The Egyptian mind with its hieroglyphic writing suggests a very different mind-set and worldview than ours – not just an interpretation of the world, mind you, but an experience of it! Coleridge talks of imagination as the basis of perception; for it is imagination – the image-creating faculty – that defines what we see. The Ancient Egyptians literally saw a different world from you or I. Theirs was a world of dryads, not trees, where the growing corn was Osiris and the flooding of the Nile a divine, rather than a physical, event.’
Petrie had suffered this paean to words as nobly as such a man could; hands folded in front of him, waiting patiently for a chance to brush aside the folly being spoken.
‘My dear sir, you are, I recall from our introductions, a solicitor, no? And we two…’ he gestured towards himself and Margaret Murray, ‘are amongst the most eminent Egyptologists in the world today. I rather think we may know a little more about the Egyptians than you.’ The edge of his mouth curved up in a crisp expression of superiority.
Lewis put down his wine glass.
‘My dear sir, these two…’ he said, gesturing to Tolkien and Barfield ‘are two of the most eminent linguists in the world today. I rather think they know a little bit more about language than you.’
Keiller let out a peal of laughter of the same volume and glee as the one he had let out the day before when the fragment of wood had crowned Piggott, and clapped his hands.
‘Bravo!’ he said. ‘Bravo! Touché, my good man!’ evidently he was beginning to become drunk, and less worried about appeasing the Olympian Petrie.
Tolkien was amused to see the austere butler Frazer also betray a smile, though he was quick to turn to the dresser and begin polishing the silverware in an attempt at distraction.
At that moment the door opened, and two maids entered bearing large serving plates of vegetables and slices of meat.
‘From our own garden.’ Keiller remarked; so, this was George’s handiwork, Tolkien thought, helping himself to a modest portion of vegetables.
With usual British politeness the meat was served, and more wine poured. Piggott, drinking water, remarked on the quality of the food, and all agreed with polite noises of approval.
Pleasantries were exchanged between the guests during this lull in combat; but before the main course was ended Violet had turned to Keiller with a smile and asked him about his interest in witchcraft.
‘Ah, how observant of you! Yes, I do have a keen interest as you picked up from my library; I am lucky enough to have in my possession a great number of the best books on the subject – some dating back to as early as 1452; I have, however, of late had to curtail my researches given my absorption in prehistoric archaeology!’
‘I would be most interested in having a better look later, if that wouldn’t be a problem.’ She said.
‘By all means, by all means! And your own interest?’ he asked, wiping his mouth with a napkin
She looked about her. ‘I am very interested in the occult – and in the practice of...magic.’ she looked at Petrie when she said the latter, relishing the word.
‘Splendid!; laughed Keiller, red-faced from the whiskey and wine, and looking directly at Mrs Murray.
Mrs Murray regarded him with a look that betrayed neither contempt or acceptance; she just looked at him then shifted her gaze to Violet Penry-Evans and then back to Keiller. Her drooping eyes sparkled as she spoke.
‘Of course the study of witchcraft does lead on to the study of ancient religions and therefore ancient sites, by consequence, Mr Keiller. The subjects are linked.’ She said.
Keiller shrugged. ‘I suppose that depends whether one believes witchcraft to be a derivative of such ancient cults.’ He said matter-of-factly.
‘Which I do, as you know.’ Mrs Murray said. He bowed his head in affirmation.
‘I regret to say,’ Keiller said ‘that I have not had the time to study your latest volume with as much rigour as I had hoped.’
‘So you have written on witchcraft?’ Tom Penry-Evans asked.
‘I have.’ She replied. ‘And as Mr Keiller rightly says my theory is that witchcraft was part of a pagan fertility cult that persisted into Christian times.’
‘Under the eye of the Church?’ Lewis, from the end of the table opposite Keiller, asked. ‘I find that hard to believe.’ His own glass had been emptied and filled nearly as much as Keiller’s, and the high colour in his cheeks was no longer due to fever.
‘Oh yes; under the eye, and even with the blessing of, the church in some cases.’ She said.
Lewis pulled a face. ‘Pagan elements, yes, I can believe that – look at all the green man images you find in medieval stonemasonry; but a still-practising pagan cult I’m afraid is very unlikely. What would you say, Mrs Penry-Evans?’
Violet thought for a while before answering. ‘I see no reason, like yourself, why elements may have survived; in the case of witchcraft we are looking not at survivals of pagan religion per se but of age old magical practises, some of which might have been passed down for generations without them being thought of as necessarily pagan.’
‘Like the Acerbot…’ Tolkien suggested; ‘it means ‘acre-remedy’, it’s a late Anglo-Saxon charm that calls for a number of prayers and Christian symbols, but the whole process is magical and pagan to the core, a fact that was probably lost on those who enacted it, who would probably have been horrified to think they were taking part in some pagan rite.’ He suddenly chuckled to himself remembering Owen’s description of the quartz stones, the cloch geala, that Mrs Mac Govan-Crow had boiled in the water she had given to Jack to soothe his throat.
‘Are you a pagan, Mrs Penry-Evans?’ Lewis asked.
‘I consider myself a believer in Christ but do not deny the older gods their due.’
Tolkien glanced up at Barfield and raised his brows. Quite how does one balance such beliefs, he wondered to himself. To believe in Christ is, surely, to deny the older gods. Still, I cannot deny the attraction these older gods might have, though by that I mean an aesthetic attraction, a literary one…
He may have been preparing to speak but Mrs Murray had started to address Mrs Penry-Evans.
‘I think it is a mistake to look at witchcraft as a magical tradition; it was religious, through and through – a religion based on the worship of a nature god, like Pan, one whose details can be gleaned by a careful reading of witchcraft trials; again and again we see the coven of 13, the leader of which is no spirit or god but a flesh and blood man – the leader of the coven, whose horns and cloven feet are but ritual costumes of a pagan priest.’
‘A god like Pan?’ Lewis asked.
‘Yes; although to the Celts he was Cernunnos, whom we see depicted on the famous Gundestrup cauldron with the antlers of a deer, stood beside a wolf and a deer, and serpents in his hands.’
‘The master of animals…’ Lewis said.
‘Myrddin Wyllt’ Mrs Penry-Evans agreed, her eyes flicking to the side to meet Tolkien’s.
‘A careful reading indeed, Ms Murray.’ Keiller said. ‘But erroneous. I point you, with all due modesty, to my publication of 1922: ‘The Personnel of Aberdeenshire Witchcraft Covens in the Years 1596-7…’
Lewis, Barfield and Tolkien exchanged surprised glances – Keiller was a dark horse; the man, as George had rightly said, was clearly a scholar.
‘…in which I cover the same sources as your book ‘The Witch cult in Western Europe’ but reach, shall we say, different conclusions; the majority of women accused of witchcraft during that period were solitary individuals – the number 13 is hardly present; and what’s more their accounts of visitations by supernatural beings cannot just be explained away by costumed priests. These are either the visions of madness, that is delusions of a sick mind, or hallucinations, or else fictions foisted upon these poor women, or forced out of them by torture at the hands of their accusers.’
Keiller’s usual boyish animation had become a steely and controlled delivery of opinion.
‘I just do not find a shred of evidence that such a demonic being was worshipped by these poor witches; these people lived in real fear of Hell – to them such worship would be anathema; we can’t make the mistake of foisting our modern concepts of such acts on the past; oh I’ve been known to wind ivy round my head and pour wine at the foot of the statue of Pan in the garden here – but it’s all play; For myself, in this age of reason the god Pan, I would say, represents something natural and capricious in our character – and can be seen as an embodiment of Nature, as something to celebrate not repress; I risk nothing by doing it, as I have little in the way of Faith; but these people would have believed that by so acting they were risking their eternal souls.’
‘Perhaps these are all the old Gods were and are, Mr Keiller.’ Mrs Penry-Evans said, ‘something close to nature within our own souls that we can allow to open up to and celebrate – a celebration of our unity with the living world. But even so, these images are living realities; Pan is very real; be careful lest you wake something you cannot then control.’
Keiller laughed. ‘I appreciate your warning; drunken play is all it is, I have no more sinister intentions. At heart I’m a traditionalist and besides, as I grow older, I find my youthful follies less and less attractive. It is hard when one has enough money to not worry about a single thing; I see myself as saved by archaeology – I have a passion now that I can share, and the money to guarantee beautiful places like Avebury are not lost to future generations. I feel worthy, now, not some rich playboy with no aims or goals.’
Mrs Murray had kept quiet during this exchange, though she had glowered for a while at Keiller’s dismissal of her ideas; he was an amateur, a rich kid with too much time on his hands; if he had studied the subject as she had, spent his life in academia, he might be less reactionary and better able to judge the value of her work. She was not about to lose her temper with a jumped-up son of a marmalade-maker. Places such as Avebury had once thronged with people proclaiming the life and sacrificial death of the divine king; and if she was right, such a ritual had continued to be enacted throughout so-called Christian history under the very nose of organised religion. Madwomen having visions – how did that explain the similarities between the accounts of witches from all over Europe? This had to be a cult that had continued in secret; it couldn’t just be coincidence; what other option was there? Not Mrs Penry-Evans’ theory, that was certain; to argue that that the many similarities in the Witch trials occurred because they were drawing on the same magical realities, the same invisible gods and spirits - Heaven’s above! To even begin to entertain such a thought would be to undo the progress of hundreds of years of critical thinking!
Two events in quick succession brought the meal to a premature close. Petrie had remained relatively silent and glowering after Keiller’s outburst of laughter; but now his plate was cleared he turned to his host and announced he had an early train to catch back to London the next day and called on Frazer to fetch his overcoat. Mrs Murray, evidently, was also about to leave, as she called out after Frazer with the same request. The guests around the table stood to say their goodbyes to the departing pair; but before she left Mrs Murray turned to Mrs Penry-Evans and said that given the latter’s interest in witchcraft she could do no better than to write to her secretary and have copies of her two books on the subject sent to her, gratis.
Mrs Penry-Evans smiled warmly, aware the gesture was meant as much for Keiller’s ears as her own, and was an attempt to help guide these poor misguided individuals back into the truth as she saw it.
‘Thank you, I certainly shall. And by way of thanks I shall send you in return two of my books.’
‘I didn’t realise you were a writer’ Mrs Murray said, surprised.
‘I go under the pen name Dion Fortune; I will send a copy of my novel, The Goat-foot God and a non-fiction work on the Mystical Qabalah.’ She beamed.
Keiller snorted at the look on Mrs Murray’s face as she responded with a polite thank you, her eyes wide in what he took to be some kind of horror.
Barfield’s eyes were no less wide.
‘Deo non Fortuna!’ he said, laughing. ‘Of course!’
‘I shall see you to the door.’ Keiller shouted after the two departing guests.
‘We shall see ourselves out!’ came the gruff reply.
Keiller looked back towards the remaining guests, twisting on the spot as if trying to decide whether out of politeness he should ignore Petrie’s remark and show them out anyway; but evidently something inside him realised the pointlessness of buttering up the old man any further and he stood where he was and laughed heartily.
‘Well I think that went swimmingly, wouldn’t you agree?!’ he said.
And at that very moment Piggott who had been sipping water rather too frequently slid to the floor in a dead faint.
‘Frazer!’ Keiller called out. ‘Smelling salts! Man down!’
‘Is he okay?’ Mrs Penry-Evans asked, walking to where Barfield and Lewis now crouched propping up the prone waxy figure.
‘I’m okay,’ Piggott mumbled; ‘Would someone mind awfully helping me back to the Red Lion? It’s devilishly hot in here.’
Chapter 38 And the Meek...
By the time Con had reached his camper beside the avenue his anger with Wolf had faded to a morose self-pity. It was obvious that he had little chance with Shen - not only because of the charisma and bearing of Hayden, but also because of Con’s own inability to get over the events of the previous year. And why should I? I lost my sister. One does not simply walk away from that. He remembered the weeks following Melissa’s death – how he felt he was walking in a different world, a horrid dream-world that he begged some higher power to wake him from; how different things would be if she was still here – he would have his sister, and maybe he would have Shen. Fate had denied him both. Fate was a cruel power. The universe sucked; it was a horrible mistake that should never have happened. He cursed whatever had caused that original static nothing to open into this nightmare of forms, where every good thing was shadowed by bad. His sister’s soul was with the demons – not free as it should be.
The camper was sweltering; he opened the side door and the windows; the sun was at least on its downward path so the day would not be long to cool, he reasoned. He opened a cupboard and fished around for something to eat; a pack of noodles fell to the floor and he took this as a sign; filled the kettle and rolled a cigarette while the kettle boiled. He threw it on the road after two or three puffs in disgust.
After the meal Con had lain on the sofa bed listening to the doves cooing; he had slept on and off and then awoke with the orange orb of the sun shining through the windscreen. It was about eight o clock. He cleaned his teeth and left the van for the pub.
The village was quiet and bathed in a warm sepia tinge from the dying sun it resembled a publicity shot for English tourism; the white pub with its thatched roof and black beams seemed cottage-box twee - the English village idyll – something only shattered on crossing the road towards the beer garden when it became apparent to Con that some kind of heated argument was taking place inside; and it was Wolf’s voice that rang loudest.
‘I’m one of the most practical people I know, mate – don’t you accuse me of not living in the real world.’
The other voice, softer and condescending, replied, but Con couldn’t make out the words.
‘Look, I practically built my van from scratch, mate – see these wristbands – I tanned the fucking leather myself, from raw fat covered deer-skin; I’m a fuck sight more adapted to life in this world than you are, mate’
Conall peered round the door nervously; Wolf was standing at the bar, turned to face a small group of men, one in a visi-vest with ‘Wessex archaeology’ on its back, and another man, in a polo-shirt and thick black glasses, his hair hidden under a black baseball cap with an English Heritage logo above the peak. This man was speaking.
‘Yeah, because dressing up in skins and making leather jewellery is so bloody useful. Why don’t you just get a real job like the rest of us have to?’
‘because I played that particular mug’s game for 20 years; I was a builder, and I gave up a two grand a month job to do what I do now.’
‘More fool you.’
‘It was my fookin choice, mate; I’m happier now than I was then. Look at you with your smug fucking grin and EH hat; you’re an unthinking selfish fucking twat; I’m taking responsibility for my life – trying to live as close to nature as I can; I’m not a fucking parasite like you; if society collapsed today you’d be dead in a week; I’d be fine – I can hunt, fish, live in the woods. You’d be robbing Tesco’s like all the other sad fucks and dying of food poisoning cos you couldn't find a way to cook yer fuckin' chicken nuggets without a microwave!’ He laughed. ‘Western civilization is a fucking cancer and you know what we ‘useless hippies’ are?' Wolf walked over to the man, speaking steadily and slowly, and glaring into the other's wide eyes '...We’re the fucking antibodies – we’re the bloody cure, Gaia’s own immune system kicking in to save her from her immanent death at the hands of a rogue fucking disease… so you’d better… bloody…. Watch…. out.’ He said, jabbing his finger in the man’s face as he spoke.
It was obvious that despite his bravado the other man had no wish for this to escalate into a brawl. Wolf, his chest still stained with ochre, looked like some madman. The seated man shifted uncomfortably and then stood and left, casting a barely audible ‘fucking twat’ in Wolf’s direction as he left the pub.
‘Aah – missed all the fun!’ Wolf grinned as he saw Con by the door.
‘What was all that about?’ he asked.
‘Oh, I think some of them got a bollocking for not dealing with the protest effectively, he he – and thought they’d take it out on me – "don’t you have anything better to do"’ he mimicked ‘"why don’t you have a shave and get a real job you hippy layabout" and that kind of shit. Normally I’d have ignored them or twatted them but still got a thumping bastard of a headache, so they got off lucky.’
Con smiled and was about to offer Wolf a drink when Ananda appeared behind the bar holding two pints. ‘On the house’ she whispered, winking.
***
An hour and a half later Con and Wolf were drunk; there had been a number of goodbyes from those who had come to protest and had to head off – most of whom wished to buy Wolf a drink; and a number of others had stayed and sat in small groups around the pub. Then Shen and Hayden had arrived; in the general hubbub Con and Shen hardly had the opportunity to share any words, and so he hadn’t been able to explain his earlier departure, nor smooth over the general air of tension that now lingered between them. To make matters worse Hayden had sat himself between them, squashing himself where there wasn’t really room for another, so Con couldn’t even turn and talk to her, being forced into the corner by Hayden’s large frame. In his inebriated state Con wasn’t in the mood to just sit and stew, either. He was angry, frustrated, upset and spoiling for confrontation.
Hayden wasn’t helping matters by launching into a diatribe against the protestors and their lack of ‘reality’, and the uselessness of any kind of beliefs, pagan or otherwise.
‘Right. Look, science is science…’ he was saying; ‘– it keeps the bullshit at bay; last week we had to cut a 19 year old girl out of a car, and she died by the roadside; she was beautiful. Where was God when she was dying? Would she have been helped by a power animal, or drumming? That’s all crap. It’s all done out of fear – a defence against the dark; it protects people from the nuts and bolts reality that this is all there is and one day, probably sooner than they think – they’ll be on a fucking slab. Where was God or the ancestors when she was dying, or the two old people who died of smoke inhalation on Christmas Day last year thanks to faulty tree lights, eh? Or my own cousin who died when he was eleven, hit by a fucking lorry? I remember my parents and my aunt and uncle going to church after that and all I could think was ‘why would you pray to a God that had taken your son away?’ Fucking ludicrous.’
Hayden’s usual glibness had been replaced with an intense seriousness, but then his swagger returned as he downed his pint.
‘It’s all pretence – look at you with your red paint and your bangles and shit – it’s playground stuff,’ Hayden said. ‘I’m sorry but it’s bullshit – dressing-up like cavemen.’
Wolf looked him squarely in the eyes.
I’m not playing at anything my friend; ochre is one of the oldest body paints used by man; it’s the blood of Mother Earth.
Hayden held Wolf’s gaze, his eyes swimming and his face wearing an expression that looked as if he was wondering if he were brave enough to openly laugh. Con, even though he sided with Wolf, for a moment could hear Wolf’s statement from Hayden’s perspective. Using phrases like ‘the blood of Mother Earth’ wasn’t going to score any points with Hayden.
‘Okay – that’s up to you –‘ Hayden managed to say, straight-faced, ‘but it’s when the place is full of hippies all trying to be like Red Indians, it’s just laughable.’
Con had tried to see Shen’s reaction to the phrase Red Indian; from his limited view he thought he had seen her blanch and sink back into her seat from where she had been leaning forward, nursing her brandy; he couldn’t tell if it was embarrassment or withheld anger. Whatever its cause, his own response was angry.
‘You can’t use that phrase’ he said, his voice shaking.
‘What phrase?’
‘Red Indian; you should say Native American or Canadian or First Nation…’ he corrected.
‘Oh it’s only a figure of speech, man, Christ!’
‘Maybe to you.’ Con answered, looking towards Shen.
‘Oh Shen doesn’t mind, do you?’ Shen just looked at him sternly.
‘Don’t you tell me what I do or don’t mind.’
‘Oh for fucks sake – lighten up you lot. It’s all the same – fucking whingeing on about the past and righting wrongs – but the past is past – we can’t change it; I don’t expect every bloody German I meet to apologise for the war; I’m not gonna fucking apologise for something white people did to the Indians a couple of hundred years ago. I wasn’t there – I didn’t call them those names originally or take their homelands.’
There was a silence. Hayden swallowed a mouthful of beer.
‘It’s like those bones – they ain’t gonna move them ‘cos its irrelevant; you can’t have them back as those days have gone – it’s like the Indians wanting their lands back – that ain’t gonna happen either. Most of those Indians took those same lands from other tribes in the past, and they lost them in turn to superior forces and better fighters – that’s the way of life. Deal with it.’
‘It’s not as simple as ‘might is right’… it was overtly racist; the Indians weren’t seen as human – it was as ideologically based as the holocaust – the only good Indian is a dead Indian.’
Hayden shrugged. ‘Well, obviously you can’t condone it - but what I’m saying is that we’re primed as a species to do this stuff, survival of the fittest, yeah? They didn’t survive. They fumbled the ball… nature judged them by eradicating them…the meek are never gonna inherit the earth, mate.’
Con shook his head. ‘Nature didn’t eradicate the Natives. Man did. Man working against nature, which as a conscious being he can easily do.’
‘How’s it against nature? It’s fucking evolution, man! It IS nature!’
Con tried to think of an example; ‘Nature makes us crave sweet and fat stuff, right? Because there’s not enough in the natural world to really fuck you up. You’d have to eat about 12 feet of sugar cane to get as much sugar as in a can of coke. So… let’s say you’re diabetic… do you just eat all the fucking sugar because ‘nature makes us want it?’ or do you see that man, in a can of coke, has created something unnatural and so you have to rein in the desire, in order not to ultimately kill yourself?
'Where are you going with this?'
'Small scale tribes can do what they want basically as there’s not enough of them to harm the environment – but when you get large numbers of people, technologically advanced, changing the planet, inventing coke, and factory farming, and motorways, then you, like the diabetic, have to rein in the desires that would, given the unnatural nature of modern society, cause death – and I also mean planetary death. So, you choose not to drink the coke, not to drive a car, not to fuck people over for a short-term fix that going to fuck everything up in the long-term.
‘What I’m saying is that the westerners killing off the Indians might seem to be ‘survival of the fittest’ in terms of short-term human goals, for a few generations, but in terms of planetary goals, the Indian, or the modern hippy, is the fittest – the most use for the planet, as he’s the one not burning his own home, the planet; therefore he’s the one most likely to survive, long-term…
‘And maybe the planet knows that. Which is why it’s producing antibodies’ he looked at Wolf who smiled back, ‘whose job is to kill off those after a short-term fix and re-establish a new kind of person who is fittest by their sense of harmony with nature.’
‘But they’ll lose.' Hayden said; 'The normal, greedy, car-driving person is always going to win – just like your bronze age horse-riders killed all the fucking stone age hippies here like you were saying earlier – the only way change will happen is by law, and no politician is going to vote for the changes you suggest because no one will vote for them – give up your cars, phones, air-travel… yeah sure! No one wants that because at the end of the day we’re all selfish.’
‘Then nature will wipe them out. Somehow.’ Wolf said.
‘Well it’ll have to, because despite putting limits on temperature rise and all that stuff, planes are gonna keep flying, cars will only increase in numbers; it’ll take a plague or a comet to knock us back to the Dark Ages – that would work, granted; but not by choice; people are too selfish.’
‘Not everyone; the people here today, that’s a start.’
‘It’s a drop in the ocean, mate. You could go as green as you like, it won’t make one iota of difference.’
Despite feeling anger at what he was saying Con knew Hayden was just stating the facts. People didn’t want to change. They didn’t want climate change, yet they also didn’t want to stop eating burgers or driving to work, or any other labour-saving device that saved labour at the expense of the planet. So how will things change? The myths told how. The wave; the flood; mans’ hubris punished by disaster; he wished there might be another way – but until the majority of people turned round and decided, willingly, to forego comfort and pleasure for long-term goals, it was the only way… and they would only change through pressure, not by choice, or, somehow, by a change of mind – maybe like Wolf’s antibodies, upping resistance bit by bit, until a new kind of person existed, one who actively turned back against the myth of progress and decided to walk another, older path; but it wasn’t really an older path – but a wholly new one; one of sacrifice and humility; and it wouldn’t be easy. It wasn’t that long before, two millennia roundabouts, that they’d crucified someone for saying exactly that.
‘Anyway – what you’re saying is shit.’ Hayden continued. ‘How can the earth create these new people? Evolution has always been about eat or be eaten; it’s an inherent system, a drive – how can the planet create a new type of man? That’s bollocks. The earth isn’t some conscious being that decides what to create; it has no concept of future, or how to remedy this; if something does happen it’s an accident, a random mutation… that’s all this is, random. The earth isn’t sitting there thinking, ooh, I’m a bit hot, better make sure the next generation of humans are yoghurt-weaving fucking stoners who will destroy the motorways and plant trees on them.’
Once more, Con found himself trying not to laugh at Hayden’s observations. He sounded like the voice of reason; his was the sarcastic and amusing mockery that the modern western worldview enjoyed bating any alternatives with; and Con, having been brought up in that culture was torn between alternatives. He, too, could have laughed at this ‘bollocks’, at Wolf, with his red-painted chest and necklaces, talking about Gaia; it was risible. Yet, at the same time, the humour was only skin-deep – a defence, an all-too clever attempt to deny an alternate point of view through what amounted to insults. Con knew that everything Wolf defended was important – not only important, necessary. Necessity demanded, as a species, that we forego our sarcastic modern superior mindset, or we would find ourselves undone by the nemesis brought on by this hubris. He had never experienced, so clearly, how the modern mindset had been so efficiently established in his psyche, from moment to moment, in school and in the media, changing, altering, establishing his thinking, his very perception of the universe, so that he, too, might look on someone as sincere as Wolf and feel like sniggering at his childish and unscientific posing. What a load of bollocks. It would be so easy to say those words, clap Hayden on the back, and breathe easily having fallen back into the dominant culture, normal, safe (for a couple of generations, anyway); he could then laugh at himself, at his childish superstitions – see his unfolding and re-emerging sense of connection to that White Goddess of his youth, as an amusing reversion to an earlier state. He could dismiss it as magical thinking, as the delusion of youth and grief; feel solid again; fit in; breathe…
…except…except….
Except Hayden was simply wrong. The dominant culture, in its hubris, was crumbling; and Wolf, and others like him, Con included, had felt another call – the beat of a different drum – and from where? Con had always felt some sense of connection to nature – and his dreams had presented him with alternative ways of thinking and being; dreams, visions, intuition… this is how the earth would speak…
Whether it was a throwback to earlier times or not, this growing sense among people of a need to return to what were older, archaic values was an attempt, Con saw, to step back to a point in time where man had taken a path towards planetary destruction, and to turn and take another path.
And even if I am a drop in the ocean, he thought, I cannot but act from what I feel to be right; even if I was the only one doing it, and it seemed to make not a jot of difference on a global scale… I, as a natural man, a child of this earth, choose, here and now, to cast off the snide, cynical attitude that I have been indoctrinated with all my life – that has led me to dismiss any sense of connection I ever felt – that made me think I was becoming mad for feeling ‘different’, so that I cast those feelings from me; but you can’t cast nature out; it rises in you like a sap, building and building; and for too long it’s been welling within me, and I’ve been scared of it, scared of my very nature… Con felt a bubbling rage and joy churning within him; and I’ve tried to dam its flow; like someone trying to block a spring with rock and concrete… but it can’t hold; I won’t let it hold any more.
Con, eyes swimming with tears of some emotion he couldn’t name – didn’t dare name – not wanting to further categorise, name, define, catalogue and dismiss what was but a flow of life – leaned forward and took from where it sat on the edge of the table, the small clay pot of greasy red-ochre and oil from Wolf’s tote bag, dipped his fingers in and ran two parallel lines across his face from one cheek to another, across his nose.
Wolf beamed at him.
‘I am the land, that is all that I am.’ Con said, the room suddenly lurching; he was aware, all of a sudden, that he’d drunk a lot more than he’d intended. But fuck it. Fuck it!
‘Jesus!’ Hayden muttered. ‘Here we go…’
‘Oh, just fuck off’
The two men, unbeknown to either, not fully consciously, were tied together in a state of conflict that neither could have, at this moment defined; what seemed on the surface an ideological spat was a much deeper conflict: on the exterior it was a reaction against unwanted aspects of their own personalities seen in the other – Hayden’s sneaking admiration for these ‘hippies’, their sheer enthusiasm and drive, their nobility, which the cynical Hayden wished he might express – and Con’s hard-headed scientific rationalistic side, a product of the west, that threatened the existence of his soul, newly born again in this glorious inebriated moment; but underneath, a deeper current ran that involved jealously on both sides for what they thought were Shen’s affections for the other; for what else had they been arguing over? What was this but that perennial battle for the hand of the sun-maiden? Who else was the earth each wanted to inherit but the dark-haired embodiment of life-to-be-lived, vivacity and promise, that was this girl, and no other, Shenandoah Derdriu Mac Govan-Crow, whose thunderous looks betrayed a discomfort at the prehistoric chest-beating going on to her right.
Hayden looked at him open mouthed.
‘Go get me another pint and I may overlook that comment.’
Conall stayed in his seat, feeling a drip of ochre running down his cheek.
‘Get your own fucking pint.’ Con hissed, aware this was an attempt for Hayden to assert alpha-status and drunk enough not to let it go unchallenged.
‘Now don’t take the piss, mate… Get me a fucking drink and we’ll let this lie…’ and then, out of the blue, ‘– I’ve seen the way you look at Shen. You’re another fucking dreamer with no idea of the real world...’ he leaned over, pulled Shen towards him; ‘survival of the fucking fittest mate, survival of the fittest’ and he kissed her on the mouth.
Con was not a brawler; wits before fists was his way, yet in his drunken frustration, with all that had built up within him over the last couple of days, he acted before thinking, pulling Hayden back from his embrace with the clearly uncomfortable Shen, whose hands were up trying to push Hayden away.
‘What the fuck, Hayden?’ she spat, angrily.
And then Con was slammed into the table, glasses knocked aside – one shattering on the floor; he’d been elbowed rather than punched; and he struggled to get up feeling dizzy and mortified, his t-shirt soaked with beer – everything seemed far away as if seen down the wrong end of a telescope; Wolf had reached over the table, helping Con to his feet, and mouthing words but Con wasn’t understanding; he could see Shen and Hayden snarling at each other but as he found his feet he lunged at Hayden and swung his fist at the latter’s face, and missed – Hayden pushed forward and grabbed Con by the upper arm and seemed ready to punch him in return, but Shen was pulling him one way and Wolf had slowly extended his hand to hold Hayden’s arm back.
‘Calm it mate. Calm it,’ he was saying; Shen glanced across at Conall with what could have been a look of disdain or pity, and Con turned, pushed through the assembled bodies, and walked from the pub, still reeling.
Chapter 39: On Silbury Hill
The colour was back in Piggott’s cheeks and he was smiling and sipping on his brandy.
‘Oh, I feel so much better; I’d not slept well the last couple of nights, and. I just kept getting waves of heat during dinner; it felt so stuffy and the atmosphere didn’t help...’
Lewis guffawed. ‘That was potentially one of the most socially awkward meals of my life. I couldn’t believe the audacity of the man, presuming all knowledge began and ended with him; I’ve never seen you look like you might explode, Tollers.’
‘I was literally dumbstruck at points.’ Tolkien admitted; ‘I am glad you came to my rescue, Owen.’
‘Poor Alexander! said Piggott. ‘He’s been treading on eggshells for the past two days trying to keep Petrie sweet; I fear Petrie’s going to return to his society friends in London with a less than glowing report on the work here…’
‘Does he hold much sway?’ Lewis asked.
‘Yes, with the Old Guard; but Alexander was never in their favour. I, too, have been told I have sabotaged my future career as an archaeologist because I’ve chosen to work under Keiller. But this is where my passion lies – and if it weren’t for Keiller I’d still be some office junior.’
He finished his drink and smiled.
‘Well thank you gentlemen for escorting me back. I’m dead tired; I can hardly keep my eyes open, so I think it’s time I retired.’
Once Piggott had gone back to his room in the pub, the three friends sat nursing their emptying beer mugs. At that moment the crowd parted, and George Mac Gowan-Crow appeared beside them.
After receiving compliments for the quality of his vegetables, which he waved off as early spring trifles, thanks to the glasshouses at the Manor, he became more serious. ‘You missed some trouble earlier tonight, my friends. George said, drawing on his pipe.
‘A group of black-shirts arrived on motorcycles looking for room to stay the night but there was no room, and besides, they wouldn’t have been welcome.’
Tolkien exchanged glances with his friends. ‘Sounds like the same group that the Penry-Evans’s saw earlier.’ He suggested.
‘What happened?’ Asked Lewis.
‘They got a bit loud – there was some shouting, but we managed to persuade them to leave. They didn’t take too kindly to being manhandled by a ‘gypsy’ as they put it, but hopefully they’ll not be back. Us Wiltshire folk know how to deal with outsiders.’ He looked at the men and winked.
‘Do you realise it’s not yet ten o’clock?’ Lewis said. ‘I had told your good lady wife not to expect us back until much later. I feel we might disturb her peace if we returned now. Should we have another drink?’
Tolkien shook his head. ‘I’ve had more than enough; anymore and I’ll be in a stupor. I suggest we go for a stroll and walk it off.’
‘Splendid idea.’ Lewis replied. ‘Do you have anywhere in mind?’
‘Yes. We’re leaving tomorrow and we’ve yet to climb Silbury Hill. It would be quite an adventure in the dark, what?’
Lewis, who had regained all his lost enthusiasm drummed on the table with both hands. ‘A better idea, I simply couldn’t imagine, Tollers! Drink up, Owen! We’re going on an adventure!’.
…
The three friends were following a path through the long grass, ahead of them George Mac Govan-Crow lead the way, every now and again looking back to make sure his wards were following.
‘It isn’t a difficult path, sirs, but I know the best place to begin the climb, is all.’ He said. He walked almost silently through the fields, unlike the noisy trampling feet of the others, who were hindered by a large supper and copious drinks.
The path up Silbury wound anticlockwise from the bank of the moat to the summit; it was not steep but the three men were still breathless when they stopped; not a word was spoken as they gathered together on the broad flat expanse that topped the mound and gazed in unison westwards to where the half-moon lay beside the Twins directly above the flickering blue of Sirius, about to set below the distant hills. The valley below was coal-black, with a thin rill of mist marking the meanderings of the river, slowly curling and undulating in the sheltered lowland, far below the summit, which was being clipped by a fresh breeze.
‘Orion is nearly gone, now summer is arriving.’ Tolkien said. ‘I shall miss him over Oxford, but am always heartened when he returns with the frost near to Christmas.’
‘Surely they built this here to look at the sky’ Barfield said, ‘Just look!’
‘That would make sense.’ Replied Lewis, ‘you could probably get a hundred people or so up here at a push, maybe it was like mayday morning at Magdalen, some great pagan Hymnus Eucharisticus being sung from the this Great Tower – or do you think it was reserved for a single star-gazer? An astronomer king?’
‘Perhaps if it was originally higher, then,’ Barfield suggested, ‘any tomb or burial may have been destroyed all those years ago, when, I believe, the Normans re-used this as a motte. Perhaps Merlin really once lay here – only to find himself smashed and discarded by the spade of a Norman soldier.’
‘Well, if we are to believe the legend he was enchanted into a tower of air or beneath a great stone by the enchantress Vivien, the lady of the lake.’ Lewis countered. ‘Tower of air this may be, but certainly not under stone – West Kennet, yonder,’ he said, pointing to the southern horizon, where the great tomb lay, ‘might have been more suitable for that.’
‘Of course, you old fool!’ Tolkien suddenly chuckled, ‘Thank you Jack! I hadn’t even begun to put two and two together… Boann, she of the fairy mound at Newgrange, and Vivien are related, etymologically – they both derive from Bovinda – white cow – they’re the same woman, though why I hadn’t made this connection before I don’t know! The woman Vivien has the guile to cheat the magical secrets from the old enchanter, just as Boannd tries to steal knowledge from her husband Nechtan’s well!’
He clapped his hands together in glee, then rubbed them together for warmth; his pipe stuck between his grinning teeth.
‘Nut the white cow of Egypt becomes the sky after separating from Geb, the earth god, who becomes the land itself; Boannd becomes the river Boyne and the Milky Way – and like Geb, Merlin becomes trapped ‘in the earth’ under the stone; he’s part of creation – and therefore, if the myth stands, he needs a twin, a Nut, a Boannd – a Vivien – and surely, as the Milky Way, she ought to be in the sky… but is there any indication he was a twin save his name? I’m sure, sure there is, if only I could remember it! Darn the lack of a library on this cursed walk!’ he stuttered, only half joking.
The cool wind changed direction and they turned their collars up against the cold.
‘Woman and knowledge…’ Lewis mused; ‘Why is it Eve who eats the apple, and Boannd and Vivien that seek the wisdom of magic? And why does it always lead to catastrophe?’
‘I don’t know;’ Barfield answered; ‘it has always seemed to me that knowledge, of whatever form, bears better fruit in the female mind than the male; perhaps the myth is somewhat chauvinistic and twisted from its origins.’
Lewis nodded, silently. ‘There may be truth in that, granted; Christ, after all, appeared first to the Magdalene after he had escaped the tomb. He trusted her with his message rather than that rag-tag gaggle of male disciples…’
‘While Merlin still lies in his tomb, wherever that might be.’ Tolkien said, his mind still on the enchanter.
‘And what tales he would tell were he to rise!’ Lewis beamed.
‘Perhaps the Normans didn’t level this site;’ Tolkien was musing, ‘perhaps a tower stood here before, long, long ago…’
‘The Hill of Winds’ he thought to himself. Built high above the flood plains, a tower from the old country, long drowned under the sea…
He looked to where George sat perched on his haunches at the edge of the mound, peering out over the valley below. Perhaps men in the past had squatted there, too – their eyes keenly surveying the horizon for the newcomers on their steeds. So George’s more recent ancestors had crouched on hills and mesas, scouting the approach of the riders from the east who sought gold, land, and game – and destroying all in their path - eyes and lips narrow with greed.
Lewis looked down over the valley of the Kennet.
‘We’ve come a long way, it feels, since we walked beside the river of the bright dog;’ he mused. ‘From dragons to dogs to the enchanter Merlin… are they connected do you think?’
Tolkien smiled to himself and began to recite an old anonymous Celtic verse:
Merlin! Merlin! Where are you going
So early in the day, with your black dog?
I have come here to search the way,
To find the red egg;
The red egg of the marine serpent,
By the sea-side in the hollow of the stone.
I am going to seek in the valley
The green water-cress and the golden grass,
And the top branch of the oak,
In the wood by the side of the fountain.
Merlin! Merlin! Retrace your steps;
Leave the branch on the oak,
And the green water-cress in the valley,
As well as the golden grass;
And leave the red egg of the marine serpent,
In the foam by the hollow of the stone.
Merlin! Merlin! Retrace your steps,
There is no diviner but God.
And the n he began to talk, though whether to the others or just to himself wasn’t clear…
‘Merlin, like Ymir is dismembered to form the world, he is sacrificed so that the circle can be built – for the circle is symbolic of the whole of the world, of the cosmos. He dies, and yet somewhere he remains, asleep, in a dream, ready to pass on its knowledge of the state of things before the fall, before the flood…’ he looked up at the milky river in the heavens,
‘and the woman who took that knowledge, freed it from his grasp, bears its light – as Boann, as Sopdet the white cow, as Isis, as the star Sirius who heralds the flood, but who brings the light to man, the light of rebirth, of renewal. So Vivien learns wisdom from the mouth of the old prophet and steals his power from him; imprisoning him with his own enchantments - drinks from the cup of knowledge, the milk of paradise, the draught of poetic inspiration, which returns us to that blissful unity of Eden when man and god walked in the garden in the cool of the day.’
Barfield and Lewis looked at Tolkien, not wishing to disturb his reverie.
‘And here we stand on his hill, the hill of the sun-eye, the hill of Sulis, she of the winding waterways, both above and below; this,’ he said, holding his arms up to the sky and turning about him as if taking in the whole of the blessed Wiltshire landscape, so magical under the crescent moon; ‘this is the place of the primal unity; this is the land formed by the rending apart of the twins… this is Ymir’s-bury; it is Emrys’s spinning castle; Merlin’s magical circle… the place where creation began…’
’You see,’ he said, louder now, turning to his friends, ‘it isn’t a case of whether it actually happened or not, I’ve been a fool. That is a modern distinction brought about by our paucity of language: myth or history? There is no ‘or’! The two are one – only our feeble modern worldview seeks to prise them apart. To try to ask if my dream of Atlantis or my visions of Eärendil and the fall of Numenor was literally true is like trying to measure love… the whole premise is wrong! History, time, reality – what if these are but modern measuring systems that would seek to divide the world into a machine of parts, no more… and say nothing of the underlying nature of the world as it is… like your poetic language, Owen, that sees the world as full of meaning; I’ve been guilty of thinking too prosaically rather than poetically; seeking rigid, measurable confirmation for something that is, at heart, poetic, and no less real for it – a thousand times more real, in fact!’
And he stared down over the dark plain where the mist now cleared from the stream, so that it lay silvered like a serpent under the moon.
‘One day the horse lords came here and they made the myth history; just as Christ had been prefigured by those ancient corn gods, so when the new people came and met the old ones and their priest, they seized their land and women and cows, just as the myth told them had always been done; just as the sun had to be rescued from the serpent of winter, so they wrestled with the Old One and cast him down…’ Tolkien was looking out to the horizon, his words coming from a place outside of him…
‘he was Emrys, Ymir, and they brought him to the stones and like the old serpent god they destroyed him and threw him down; made of him the earth - buried him under a stone and claimed the place for their own; they took the cup of the mysteries and drank it; but still he sleeps, this ancient one, bearer of knowledge of before the fall, before the flood, from a time when bird and beast and fish were one with man… and one day he will return…one day he will be released from his prison of glass…’
Below them a barn owl wheeled silently across the valley; stopping to hover for a moment before wheeling off again towards the copse of trees where the Swallowhead spring lay.
Barfield softly spoke a verse of Coleridge to the winds:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
‘I wish we could drink that milk and see these myths as they had.’ Tolkien said, having broken from his vision; ‘The flood… Nile or Boyne or Milky Way, or the flood that swamped Atlantis or the metaphysical flood that ended man’s state of unity with the divine… to see it united, as poetry, rather than fragmented, either, or…? What then can we do? How can we restore it, give it voice?’ his voice trembled.
‘We must sing the myth forward,’ said Lewis. ‘We can be the mouthpiece for Merlin – sing the old stories forward. We can be the voice. We must tell the stories.
***
After a few minutes of sitting silently a number of pin-points of light appeared from the eastern horizon near the Sanctuary and drifted westwards; soon they were accompanied by the deep rumble of engines; the peace of the evenings was disturbed as the motorcycles approached and stopped near the foot of the hill on which the friends were sitting. Here the land was higher where the road rose over the hill and it formed a kind of land-bridge across the moat to the hill, and the men parked their bikes and their loud voices and laughter could be heard; then the smashing of a bottle and more laughter.
George turned to the friends; ‘I fear it’s the blackshirts from earlier.’ he said.
‘What do we do?’ Lewis asked, peering around for an alternative route down. ‘I don’t want to be sat here all-night listening to that – and if they decide to come up here…’
Tolkien nodded. ‘Then we best just go down and leave them to it. Better we leave now than surprise them if they decide to climb the hill. Besides, if we go down, we’re closer to the road and we can just leave.’
Whistling and talking so they didn’t arrive suddenly and by surprise, the four men made their way down to the foot of the hill where the bike gang had parked and were starting to build a fire.
‘Christ! Nearly gave me a fuckin’ ‘heart attack mate’ one laughed as Tolkien reached the level ground and appeared in the firelight. Lewis and Barfield arrived next, and then George.
‘Hang on,’ another biker barked; ‘it’s that fucking gypsy from the pub!’
A weasel-faced young man who had eventually managed to get the fire lit, stood, still holding a smoking stick. ‘You little shit!’ he began saying, striding towards George. But Tolkien barred his way.
‘Out of the way, old man.’ He sneered. ‘We owe that gypsy fellow a beating.’
‘You’ll take not a single step forward, my lad, or it’s a beating you’ll get.’
‘Is that a threat? Hear that lads, granddad is going to rough us up!’ he laughed, leering close.
Tolkien lifted his walking stick high above his head, his eyes sparking.
‘Do not mistake me for some weak old fool! I did not fight through fire and mud in the trenches of Flanders so selfish fools like you could play with our liberty! Go back whence you came. Ne Paseran! You shall not pass!’ and he waved his walking stick at him in defiance.
Perhaps because of his mention of having fought for his country, but a tall man who had been hitherto standing near the fence away from the small fire moved forward at those words and spoke.
‘Come on, leave him be Mitch – it’s not worth the trouble.’ The tall man was older, Tolkien’s age; a look passed between them that suggested this man, too, had fought, and was not about to see a fellow veteran beaten for the sake of revenge on some gyppo.
‘But Campbell…’
‘Leave him!’ the man named Campbell shouted; and in silence the four friends left he hill and walked calmly on to the road.
Chapter 40: The River of Milk
He walked and walked, his mind ablaze; his mouth set firm and his eyes fixed ahead, shedding lines of tears that he never stopped to wipe away.
Inside he was in conflict, a sickening spiralling of anger and fear – half of him wanting to go back and apologise and for Shen to look on him kindly, the other wanting to go back and pummel Hayden’s smug face into a bloody mess. But what would that achieve? He had already bloody won; Shen was his, not Con’s. A great tug of war was taking place in his soul; and he swung from one extreme to the other.
He had crossed the Silbury road before he realised why he was heading for the river, the deed he had gone there to do: the same deed he had failed that day the previous April on the night Melissa had died. But he did not know if he sought rebirth or dissolution. And in the moment of that realisation, with nothing left to lose or fight for, he felt as if the earth had crumbled beneath him and that he were falling further into the abyss... caring no more to protect himself from his own grief and anger a deeper darkness took him than any he had ever known and engulfed him, save for one small ember of anger that glowed deep down; so standing on the edge of the road, looking up at the stars he shouted, venting his rage….
'Am I to be judged by THAT?!!' he shouted at the sky. 'Christ I am GLAD I’m not like that! I’m glad I’m a fucking dreamer! I’d rather be poor and free every day of my life than, than THAT!’ he spat.
He tasted salt; and then in the blurry darkness beyond he thought he saw the shape of something dark against the lesser darkness of the fields; something coal-black sloping away towards the river; and he followed, no longer afraid; willing the dark hound to take him. And he followed where it had seemed to lead, towards the stream.
A faint breeze ruffled the surface of the river…
‘I am what I fucking am!’ He repeated. And in the void that punctuated this angry cry, which was nothing less than an affirmation of his true character and the taking of responsibility for every single one of his past actions, in the twinkling of an eye, all was changed… a realisation he had passed a point of no return; that he would no longer return to how he had been, scared to be who he was…
…and in the swirling, stinging veil of his tears he saw on the opposite bank not the dark crouched apparition he had glimpsed moments before, but, below the white of the moon, a smudge, a white phantom, a dream; a dark-haired girl on the banks of the river of Paradise; her hand waving, not beckoning, but sending him back; warning him…
Then it was gone, and a silent cry welled up from his throat, gasping.
‘Mel..?’ he whispered. There was no reply save the wind in the grasses; hissing like snakes; they seemed to say he could not join her, only by entering the river, and to enter the river, was to die.
He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand; salty wetness smeared with red-ochre…
He took off his shoes and began to strip, walking resolutely into the gurgling cold waters; until shaking uncontrollably, he knelt in the holy water, he did not lay down and drink deep as his sister had done, no – he remained upright and splashed three great handfuls of the chill water over his face and shoulders, gasping.
‘Release me, Mother… May all that was hindering me, begone!’ he shouted. ‘I am what I am; no man nor woman will ever change that. Fuck them all. Because you know what? I choose me! I choose me! I admire the person I am; I’ve fucked up in the past, but only as I worried what others thought. I don’t act for them anymore… I stand naked before you!’ he addressed the crescent moon, floating above the brows of Pegasus, near the gushing waters of Aquarius…; ‘see me for who I am!!!’ and he stood up in the water, his arms outstretched, his eyes seemed to roll up into his head… as it seemed wave upon wave of grace flowed up through his entire body…
‘I. AM. PUCK!!!’
And then he slipped; the slimy rock under his foot seemed to shift in the water and he twisted and fell, his foot caught between the rock and the roots of a strong Elder sapling on the bankside; and he teetered and fell to the side, catching his side on a half-submerged branch that tore a hole in his shirt and scraped at the skin; he felt his side hit the water and then all was black and freezing cold and muffled; he kicked out but his foot was held fast; he shouted and it burst out of him as bubbles; his ankle and side screaming with pain, he was encased in a shroud of black ice and he pushed out with his arms, ineffectually, trying to lift himself out of the water, but only managed to scrape great clouds of chalky debris up from the floor of the stream.
No thoughts came – just a wave of terror like he had never felt before; he was going to drown here; and then a surge of energy burst through him as he struggled for his life, a berserker rage that saw his limbs flailing in all directions – not knowing which way was up – and he involuntarily drew in a breath – a mouthful of the brackish blackness; his eyes wide in horror seeing nothing but flashing stars… his neck seeming to snap back, the bones feeling like they were breaking, and then a silence deeper than he had ever known, a void on the edge of eternity…
Then suddenly something was around him – pulling him backwards – arms around his chest, wrenching him backwards from the watery abyss back into time - turning him, dragging him half up the reed covered bank.
‘Fookin’ breathe man!’
With a rasping inrush of slimy water and air Con’s lungs which had closed off to protect themselves finally opened – a great glut of choking stuff lodged halfway down his throat and then was expelled.
Con lent forward, eyes streaming as he coughed and retched violently; mud, water, then sickly sour beer ejected with a splash into the water below; twice again he heaved and emptied his throat and stomach; he was nothing but a void, emptying, emptying, until he lay shaking violently, tears streaming from his eyes, on the bank, and wiped the snot and puke from his mouth.
Wolf was speaking, but Con understood nothing, he was weeping uncontrollably; Wolf was there directly before him;
‘Get up, come on – just get onto the grass – you’re in shock.’
Numb and vacant he took Wolf’s proffered arm and dragged himself on legs made of jelly onto the grass; a wave of nausea hit him and he retched again, and then he lay on the grass, on his side, eyes now wide open and his body shaking, uncontrollably weeping.
‘What were you doing, man?’ Wolf was asking.
‘I slipped. Accident… thank you.’ Con managed between deep breaths.
He looked skywards and felt a shaking deep inside, and then a sensed light; for that ember of anger, that tiny pin-prick of light in the dark of the abyss, had in the moment it was vocalised relit in his being a fire long smothered; Conall was free, as free as the moment he had emerged from his mother’s womb – naked, shivering, wet with the waters of the Kennet – he had crossed from one state to another; the old him - what had really been but a shell of phobias, an armoured mask defending itself from the threat of change, of death, of his own reality that so sacred him, had itself died, drowned in those waters of despair, and as he had crumbled he had been reconstituted, and he cried out with joy like a new-born hearing the sound for the first time.
His mind was a blossoming of new emotions – unfettered joy and deep, deep sorrow. Understanding.
‘I’m not afraid anymore, Mel! I’m not afraid!!!’ he shouted, and the tears that mixed with the river water on his cheeks were tears of joy. He looked up at the stars and saw them for what they were, not thermonuclear furnaces creating matter but great beings of immeasurable age, singing the cosmos into being… and at that moment he knew, just knew, that he had existed in one form or another since the beginning of time and that he and they would always exist; he had stepped out of time and the scales had fallen from his eyes; what was time? It had ceased to have meaning - he felt in an instant the genetic history of his entire being… from man to ape to mammal back to the first fish swimming in the primal oceans, whose origins were still remembered in the sea-like saltiness of his blood; millions upon millions of years and millions upon millions of lives rising into being and annihilation; and they were not separate from him, they were him and in that transformative moment he did not know whether Conall Astor was a creature of flesh or fish… or where the stars ended and where he began, for there was no difference - all was one; all had always been one; and all would always be one.
A few minutes later they were walking back from the river, Wolf’s arm supporting Con, who was walking in a kind of trance.
‘There’s something you should know about Melissa,’ he said. ‘She killed herself, Wolf. We told everyone that she’d drowned by accident – but she didn’t.’
‘Shit, man. Shit. I’m so sorry.’
‘We didn’t want any copycat deaths – fans aping what she did; so, we said it was an accident; but the death certificate and the coroner ruled she had killed herself. She had three times the legal limit of alcohol in her blood; she’d written a short note – in her book, the one I showed you the other morning – and she’d left it open on the riverbank on that page.
I’m going to the river to die; to die, Wolf – that’s what she’d said:
No more to drink the milk of paradise ’
‘I was here, Wolf. I got a phone-call from her husband to say that she’d gone missing and I just assumed she’d run away with someone else. Tony was a wanker – and she’d gone and so I was happy, I didn’t think twice. I didn’t know she was in this state. I was here – I didn’t go and look for her. I was too besotted with Shen; I should have gone but I didn’t – I was here laughing and kissing and happy and my twin sister was already dead…the night before Tony’s text...’
Oh my poor Melissa. Poor Titania.
‘She’d put stones in her bag to weigh her down.’
‘It’s not your fault, Con. What could you have done?’
‘I could have listened. She seemed happy but maybe she had just become resolute at what she wanted to do. She told me she’d been writing lyrics about death, for fuck’s sake and I didn’t see what she was trying to say.
‘The day I kissed Shen on West Kennet was the day I got the message. I ignored it, Wolf – I thought deal with it Anthony, she’s left you. And by then she was already dead. And I didn’t know.’ His breath had calmed slightly. He paused then turned to look Wolf in the eyes.
‘Aren’t twins supposed to know? Shouldn’t I have felt it? But that night, the night before his text, I had come here, I’d had a dream, years before – of submerging myself in a river, and that night I just had this urge to come here and enact it; but when I was standing on that bank there, deciding not to wade in, she was actually doing it. I didn’t put the two together until a few days later when my Mum rang to tell me they’d found her body. When she rang, I just left. I didn’t tell Shen why I had gone. I didn’t say goodbye I just left.’
‘Even if you’d gone after you got Anthony’s message it would have been too late, Con.’ Wolf said.
Con shrugged. ‘But I still ignored it – I can’t believe I stayed and just dismissed it. I can’t believe I ignored the warning signs from her; she must have been trying to tell me those last few times we met. I was selfish.’
‘You can’t save her Con, you couldn’t have saved her then, either. In this shitty world you can only save yourself.’
Con stared at the sky.
‘And you know what?’ Wolf said.
‘Hmm?’
‘It’s not Shen’s fault either.’
‘I never said it was.’
‘You were happy here and you think you should have been fucking miserable or you should have been there and stopped it; but you carried on. I think you think your intoxication with Shen blinded you to something you should have been feeling. That somehow being here with her was wrong; and so, for you Shen somehow represents that wrong. But it’s not her fault.’
‘I know it’s not’
‘But you act like it is. You keep her at arm’s length. You’re distant – she says you’re distant; that you’re not who you were. You need to do two things: forgive yourself and forgive her; you were happy, you deserve that. You can’t change what happened; all you can do is change how you react to it.’
‘Have I fucked it up?’ Con asked, shaken.
‘No mate; not at all. Life goes on. You have to go on. Start again.’
Chapter 41 Belonging
A lone figure was walking the high banks of the circle along the path that lead from the southern entrance to the copse of tall trees at the eastern entrance; the roots of the trees sprawled and twisted down the bank like a river of entwined serpents, and it was over these roots the figure stepped, making her way up to the mighty trees. She stopped and lay her arms about the trunk of one, and gently rested her forehead against its smooth moon-pale bark.
Her lips moved in what may have been a silent prayer, but any passer-by would not have understood the words of those breathed syllables had they been close enough to hear, for they were in a language never spoken in this land, a language hundreds, maybe thousands of years old, born of a land of forest, mountain and prairie an ocean away.
She lifted her head and watched the tangled web of branches creak and shift before the moon; her unbound hair ran down her back like a shadow, and down her small dark face glistened two lines of tears.
Shenandoah felt very alone; perhaps she had always felt this way. In a way she envied these trees, rooted in this ancient earth; she, too, was of this land, but a large part of her didn’t belong; and yet neither did she feel she belonged anywhere else – if she returned to Canada to be amongst her great-grandfather’s people would she feel any more rooted there? She doubted it; that’s why it’s not about blood and bone, she mused, my connection to Itsipaiitapio’pah isn’t through blood, but through spirit. She felt like some windblown seed of some exotic flower that had taken root in foreign climes, but one still drawing sustenance from this earth; whether such a flower ‘belonged’ or not it still drew nourishment from the earth and blossomed in the light of the same sun; belonging wasn’t to do with how long your ancestors had been in a certain place; belonging was about now, about people alive today, she thought; it was about friendship and acceptance. Shenandoah’s sense of belonging was not about being Irish or Native Canadian, these were her people only in the loosest sense; no, it was about finding others who shared her beliefs and values, her passions and hopes; her sense of the mystery of the cosmos, of the sanctity of nature and life, of consciousness of the natural order of things; of belonging not to this or that tribe, but to the Earth. And this is why Shenandoah was weeping; for she had thought she had found such a friend, but he had walked away.
She turned and sat against the trunk, and took her purse from her bag; there, folded amongst receipts and her business cards was a sheet of paper. It was a letter; and she read it through her tears.
2nd June 2011
Shenandoah,
There’s no easy way to say this; it was my sister Melissa’s funeral today; she died in a tragic accident. I apologise for the handwriting but I’m drunk. I wish you all the happiness you deserve but it’s probably for the best if we don’t contact each other again.
Conall
Two emotions were tearing at her heart; such sadness for Conall; he had been so happy and full of life and this just sounded so sad; and anger, for which she felt a horrible guilt, feeling so selfish for even allowing it to surface. June 2nd. But he had left Avebury some three weeks earlier, way before the accident, without so much as a goodbye. What had been his excuse then, before his sister had died?
She remembered the day he left. She had texted him and got no reply and had walked down the avenue to find his camper gone. Had she meant so little to him that he should leave without seeing her? What had she been, some kind of holiday fling? She couldn’t reconcile this with how he had been with her. She had felt that they had so much in common; a shared way of looking at the world; she had felt this was someone she could trust; dare she say it she had thought this someone she could grow to love. He had understood her; her quirks; her love of the stars and her fear of great waves.
The first week she was shocked and worried; then she felt a fool and the worry turned to anger. When the letter came, she just felt dead inside. She cried for him and his loss; cried for her loss too. How could she help him if he just wanted to cut her off? Was he just using what had happened as a conveniently arising excuse to cut her out his life? She had texted and written him several emails, the last had begged him just to be civil and let her know if she should just forget him and move on. It was an appalling thought and she felt guilty for having it, but surely, he hadn’t used Mel’s death to such ends? But at least he had written, and in the circumstances, she didn’t know whether to write back and console him; she didn’t want to be an added problem at such a time.
She had never told her Granddad. He had asked about Con, but she had said she hoped one day he’d be back, but he had suffered a great loss and was taking time to grieve. A few weeks later Alfred’s health had declined severely, and he had died of pneumonia in his bed at the cottage. On that last day he had squeezed her hand and told her to be happy at all costs. And he had said that Con would come back; that’s what she meant when she had said to him in the pub two days before today she had kind of known she would see him again; he had asked if she’d seen it in the cards and she said no.
When she saw her Grandfather’s will leaving Con his flute it grieved her; she felt the old man had had some kind of naïve trust in the man that it seems was unwarranted. She had not meant that much to him, and she would in all likelihood never see him again. It was ridiculous anyway – she had only spent 4 days with him; it was no time at all to gauge another; all that sense of a shared worldview was probably illusory.
A couple of weeks after Alfred’s funeral she had made a decision that it was time to move on; she had let Con know about Alfred by letter, giving him the chance, if he wished, to reply, but none was forthcoming. She had resolved to walk to West Kennet and to return to the Swallowhead spring the piece of chalk he had given her there – but she never got that far; just beyond the Beckhampton to Avebury road, where the path meets the river on its way towards Silbury hill she had felt a pain in her ankle and looked down in horror to see an adder slide away into the long grass; panicking she had fled back to the road and burst into tears asking the first person she saw for help; it had been Hayden. The great spirit, she thought, had sent her a saviour, someone to replace Con. But the chalk pebble was still in her handbag.
Hayden was a good man; loyal, charming, good-looking, intelligent. A darn sight more practical than the dreamer Con would have been, she had consoled herself by thinking; and what did it matter if Hayden wasn’t as entranced by her ancestry and her mystical flights of fancy? None of her previous boyfriends had been, and she had learned to keep that side hidden. Maybe it was meant to be hidden; maybe she really was alone, and Con hadn’t really thought the same way; he’d just played along with her. But he had seemed different - a world away from the men she’d usually dated; full of bravado, all mouth – Con had been somewhat shy, quiet, yet fired up when he wanted to be; he was a dark horse, a lot more simmered under that calm surface than he let on; yes, she liked the attention of those jack the lads; but underneath they bored her; she liked the attention but when she had it she found she didn’t want what they really had to offer once the charm began to wear thin;
It wouldn’t be true to say that she hadn’t thought about Con when she had moved back here in the early spring; but she loved, she thought, Hayden, and she wanted to be nearer to him; Scilly was too far away, and the idea of coming back to her granddad’s house was so appealing. She’d soon stopped looking for Con’s dark tousled locks amongst the crowds in the village. Until a few days ago.
It had been lovely to see him; but he had been cool, distant – still sweet, still full of the same ideas; and they had talked, but he didn’t seem he wanted anything more. She had so wanted to ask him why he hadn’t written, but she didn’t have the courage. He seemed too fragile for a start, and did she really need him to say, again, that he just didn’t have those feelings for her?
But at the Devil’s chair – when he’d told her his dream of the waves and the building of the temple – she was sure he had meant that she had been the woman in the dream – but when she had got close he had backed off. The thought sickened her.
Tonight she should have followed him; she was proud of what he had done, standing up to Hayden; Hayden hadn’t meant any harm he just hadn’t thought as usual; no – it was more than that – he knew; knew she had feelings for Con; poor Hayden – and he’d been angry and defensive; but what he had done to Con was unforgiveable; Shen hadn’t known what to do; as Con had left she had got up to follow but Hayden had grabbed her arm. ‘You dare!’ he had said. ‘It’s okay’ Wolf had said, ‘I’ll go’, but he had come back in after a couple of minutes; Con had vanished; Wolf had headed for the cove, following someone he thought was Con but it hadn’t been him. ‘Maybe he’s gone back to his van.’ Wolf had said, but Shen had had another thought. She didn’t know why – she had no reason to suppose he’d go there, a place that had been special to them as it was.
‘Try the Swallowhead.’ She said.
A few minutes later she had left the pub herself, alone. She had told Hayden it wasn’t working; she wasn’t happy; ‘Do you still have feelings for Con?’ he had asked. She hadn’t lied; Hayden stood up and walked out, turning as he left to simply say he wasn’t a fucking mug and there were no second chances; it was her loss. Putting on a tough exterior to the end, Shen thought. She could see he was hurt. Part of her had wanted to put her arms round him so that those tears she had seen welling up in his angry eyes might not be shed, like she had when he’d first told her about his cousin dying when they were children and how he’d rowed with his mother and father, telling them he’d never go to church again as God wasn’t kind, but a bastard… But she simply couldn’t do it. All it would have taken was to walk a few steps forward, and she couldn’t do it.
And now she was here; she’d blown it with Hayden and the man she had feelings for had shown her little sign he might feel the same; all his actions could be interpreted as friendship, nothing more. Shen was steeling herself; he walked away once and could so easily do it again. I don’t think he’s a bastard, she thought; I had to believe he was before to get through this; the fact is I don’t know why he did what he did, I just know we get on so well; I just wish I had the chance to speak my mind – but it sounds so selfish demanding why he hadn’t been in touch after all he’s been through; it sounds petty; the answer is obvious: he doesn’t feel the same.; perhaps he never did. But her hand went to the chalk pebble in her purse. You can’t base a relationship on a single day, she reasoned – but that day, when we sat by the spring and he gave me the pebble, and we kissed on West Kennet, I know he could have loved me; loved me, understood me, treasured me. Rescued me, even, from this wasteland of un-belonging.
Chapter 30: The Protest
Conall’s fitful sleep had been disturbed from just after dawn by the passing of vehicles on their way to the circle. Eventually he gave up trying to sleep and checked his phone for the time; it was just gone seven, and there was a text message from Wolf waiting for him: ‘Main event at 10 – meet at the Devil’s Chair at 9’
Con rolled over and turned the gas on under the coffee pot. Before long he heard another vehicle arriving, parking up next to his, and then music and voices. He threw on some clothes, poured a coffee and opened the side door to greet the day.
A camper van had pulled up beside his, and a young couple with a toddler sat on the grass nearby; the woman, with purple and pink highlighted dreadlocks greeted him and asked him if he knew anything about the protest.
‘We’re meeting at the Devil’s Chair at nine, which gives us plenty of time to move down to the excavation on the avenue for when the Chairman arrives. Then Wolf’s going to hand over the petition and we’ll accompany the chairman to the museum.’
At that moment a large grey van bearing the BBC logo drove past.
The young woman frowned. ‘I hope they’re not expecting trouble. It’s a peaceful protest.’
Con shook his head. ‘No – that’s not for our benefit – Wolf said the chairman’s a media whore,’ he chuckled ‘and that the media were bound to be here for the opening of the museum. It’s all word of mouth, you know – the protest; they have no idea anything is going to happen.’
Conall offered them a coffee, but they were fine, and so returned to his camper. He checked his phone to find another message from Wolf.
‘Put the kettle on’ it read.
A few minutes later Wolf’s Yorkshire tones could be discerned outside as he spoke to the couple in the newly arrived van.
‘Well, I’m fookin’ chuffed you’ve made it, Ian,’ he was saying to the man
‘Good to see you Wolf me old mate’ the other replied. Wolf said ‘I meant to catch up in the Spring when I was down in Glasto, but it means a lot you’re here…’
‘You too Wolf.’
He knocked on the window of Con’s van.
‘Come in. Coffee’s done…Bloody Hell!’
Wolf, though it was impossible to see this was Wolf, was standing outside. He was wearing a hood of wolfskin – more properly an entire skin of a wolf, head and all, draped over his shoulders, over a brown woollen cloak, with the wolf’s face leering above his own, which was hidden in shadow; he was bare chested, this, too, aside from its usual tattoos, painted in whorls and spirals of ochre, with the paws of the wolf crossed over it. Around his neck hung a leather circular pouch inscribed with a design of a man between two rearing wolves. In one hand Wolf was clasping a roughly crafted spear, decorated with feathers – the other hand, empty, pulled open the camper door.
‘I think you may need to bring it out – don’t think the wolfskin’s gonna fit in there and I’m not taking it off.’
Con brought the cafetiere over to the stone against which Wolf had decided to sit.
‘So is your intention to maul the chairman or just shit him up?’ he asked.
‘Hehe – didn’t want to look like some sad hippy – think this’ll get me noticed?’
Con snorted. ‘Arrested, maybe.’
‘What were you two up to last night, anyway?’ Wolf said, blowing on his coffee to cool it. ‘Hayden was well pissed off.’
‘Oh well. She hoped he was asleep.’
‘He was awake at midnight chatting with me, and of course she rolls in saying she’d been to the circle with you.’
‘Well, nothing went on; he can fuck right off.’
‘Hehe – that’s what she said to him. They weren’t up when I left, so maybe they’re making it up…’ Wolf winked at Con.
Con shot him a look of distaste but bit his tongue. He thought of her words. ‘I don’t love Hayden. Maybe I’ve never really loved anyone.’
He changed the subject.
‘What time will we have to leave. I need a wash.’
‘Bollocks, man – just stick some ochre on – go as a berserker!’
‘I’d just look dirty. Look, give us five minutes…’
Wolf and Con reached the Devil’s Chair at quarter to nine. The Avenue had been empty, no sign at all that the chairman might be visiting that day, save for a cordon of hazard tape set around the excavation site. The sight that greeted them in the circle was different, however. A group of about twenty people, clearly Wolf’s friends, given their colourful get-up, were sat on and around the Devil’s Chair, while further on, in the carpark of the Red Lion, were several vehicles including the BBC van. In the adjoining section of road, individuals could be seen walking backwards and forwards, preparing for the visit – people in suits or visi-vests.
‘Is he here yet?’ Wolf asked a greying, bearded man in a tie-dye t-shirt and baggy shorts.
‘Yeah. They’ve gone to the tea rooms first, to get ready. The BBC guy said they’re filming him at the excavation site at ten.’
‘Our man on the inside, hehe. The others got wind of anything?’
‘Nah – we blend in with all the other weirdos!’ the man laughed.
‘You still think it’s better to confront him near the excavation?’
The man nodded. ‘The bones are in the museum, but you’ll not get in there. But they can hardly stop you walking along the Avenue.’
For the first time to Con Wolf seemed a little unsure.
‘Did he say if they’d be walking?’
The greybeard nodded. ‘They’ll be walking past us here so I guess we just follow them?’
‘That’s the idea.’
‘Or,’ Con suggested, ‘you go up now and hide behind the stones…’
‘Tempting,’ Wolf said ‘but I’m thinking if anymore turn up we’re not going to be able to hide!’ As he spoke another small group of people were arriving. Con scoured the crowd, looking for Shen. The thought of her lying beside Hayden in bed was making him feel sick. Come on, he thought, willing her to arrive.
After a short while the first of the archaeologists began to appear, making their way through the assembled crowd to the Avenue. A few of the younger ones, hard-hatted and wearing their luminous jackets, stopped to talk with Wolf, who they had talked to in the pub over the last few days. Then a larger group could be seen moving opposite the pub, joining the gaggle of yellow-jackets and suits, all now crowding around someone Con couldn’t quite see. The assembled crowd of a two dozen or so people began to walk towards the stones where Wolf’s band sat on the grass; they passed by without so much of a second look, though one of the two camera crews, a local news channel, halted to take some sweeping shots of the scene, a view improved by the sun breaking out of the light cloud that had been hanging around since dawn.
As they passed, Con caught sight of the man at the focus of the crowd – the chairman, in a smart black suit and hard hat, a small delicate man with the look of a schoolboy in a new blazer, chatting animatedly to a heavily bearded archaeologist.
Con scanned the far reaches of the circle for any sign of Shen, but then Wolf was by his side and as if summoned by some silent command the protestors all stood and gathered around Wolf.
The main body of archaeologists, English Heritage officials and the press had left the circle and could be seen crossing the road that lead to the Avenue. Wolf turned to Con and pressed two fingers against Con’s cheek, dragging them slowly down in a soft, cold, line. Wolf’s fingers were red with ochre.
‘You’re a warrior now, Conall.’ he smiled.
‘It’s time’ he shouted to the gathering, whom Con reckoned to now be easily double that of the official party.
The greybeard from before began to beat a large wooden-framed drum, a beat taken up by others in the group – a slow, steady beat, increasing to a march. And as they walked, in a double line, the drumbeats seemed to echo and increase, joined by a soft chanting and the playing of native flutes.
Con felt ill at ease. He agreed in principal with the protest, but he wasn’t a ‘joiner’, as he put it; happier to sit at the side-lines or to be up front, lecturing, guiding; he wasn’t a follower, and so he felt awkward. And where was Shen?!
The procession moved from the Devil’s Chair, and up the tree-lined bank behind it, from where the archaeologists could be seen gathered about their excavation area beside the stone in the Avenue – their heads now turning to see what the noise was coming over the bank. Con wondered how it looked to them – this raggle-taggle band approaching down the slope of the henge bank and across the road, to a steady, haunting rhythm, accompanied by the otherworldly sound of chanting voices, in words he did not understand.
By the time Wolf’s group had entered the field all activity around the excavation had ceased and all eyes were turned their way – and cameras too. Con could see the chief archaeologist moving around amongst his fellows, red-faced, his interview with the Chairman having been brought to an unexpected and troublesome halt. The younger students seemed to be smiling, amused at the interruption; others just sipped their take-away coffees nonchalantly. And the Chairman looked on with cool detachment, every now and again whispering something to an aide who would rush off in a flap and shout something into a phone.
Con strangely began to feel inconspicuous, as if the two lines of ochre on his cheek had rendered him invisible. The drums continued their rhythm as the protestors fanned out, forming a semi-circle around the official group, practically hemming them in against the fence that stood behind the stone. The beat seemed to increase in strength and speed, from a march to a heartbeat, and faster, until Wolf raised his spear and brought it down with a shout and the drums stopped. Protestors and archaeologists stood face to face in silence. Somewhere a crow cawed.
Wolf stepped forward.
The Chairman, to give him credit, stepped forward, too – a full head shorter than Wolf, he nevertheless looked up into that shadowed face with equanimity.
‘May I help?’ he asked, squinting – as Wolf, cunningly, had stood with the sun at his back.
‘We have come today,’ came the voice from under the wolf’s head, ‘to protest against the placement of the bones of our ancestor in the museum. I have a petition here signed by nearly a thousand neo-pagans, witches and druids, demanding that people of our faith, which hold these bones as sacred, be consulted over the new placement of these bones.’
He handed the chairman the print-out of signatures.
The chairman looked at the sheaves of paper, folded them in half and put them at his side.
The cameras, which had hitherto been on the red-painted man in the wolfskin now turned to the smaller man in his pristine tailoring.
‘English heritage,’ the Chairman began ‘is committed to the preservation of Britain’s past; we are dedicated to preserve the sites and artefacts in our custodianship for future generations, for their education and knowledge. I believe that the movement of the West Kennet bones from out of storage to a place where they can be seen and appreciated and studied not just by archaeologists but by the public and yourselves as pagans is a positive step. I shall study your petition; we do have an advisory body that looks into the impact our work has on the beliefs of those who worship at sites such as these. If you wish I can put you in touch with the spokesperson for that body.’
Con watched as the chairman delivered these lines. They hadn’t been rehearsed, like Wolf’s – they seemed to flow from the Chairman naturally, effortlessly. He seemed neither fazed or angry at Wolf’s disruption of his day – no – if anything, Con surmised, he seemed pleased… the cameras, after all, were rolling, and he’d been given the chance to put forward his policy in a suddenly more newsworthy piece of footage.
‘You see these bones are not just those of an ancestor of those who follow your beliefs, ‘ he went on to say, ‘but of many of us here who follow a variety of them; it is with great respect that we are allowing many, many more people to come and see his remains in this brilliantly designed new exhibit…’
Before he could continue with his rhetoric Wolf interrupted him. ‘Respect?’ Wolf said, incredulously. ‘have you any idea what this man believed, or what his wishes would have been, as an individual?’
‘The beliefs of our ancestors have been lost in time,’ the Chairman said, smooth, unflustered, ‘do you think he would have minded knowing all the good that has already come and will continue to do so from this brilliant new display? Analysis of his bones will teach us a great deal about how his people lived; about their health, about his own condition and the society that supported him. How many people will come to the museum and be inspired by seeing him? How many future archaeologists will find their career looking at his bones? How many lecturers, pathologists…pagans will be inspired by visiting him here? And what should we have done – have the bones remain in storage, or buried again where no one could see them, or be inspired by them?’
‘Yes. If that is what he wanted – as I believe it is; this was his land and he wished at last to go into that earth that had long been soaked with the blood of his people. You are taking him away from his family, his people. You are putting him on display like some circus freak. He was probably a priest, a prophet – would you condone digging up some early English Saint and putting his head on display as education? No. because you treat paganism as a second-class religion.’
‘I can assure you that is not the case. We treat all religions with equal respect and all religious imagery and artefacts likewise. There is no evidence saying this man was what you say. We do respect that he was once an individual – and surely by bringing him back home and honouring him by placing him in the museum is better than leaving his remains in some box in a museum storeroom?’
Con was suddenly aware that a white car had pulled up in the Avenue and three police officers had approached.
‘Was an individual?’ Wolf asked, face to face with the Chairman. ‘At which point does one lose that status? Could I dig up the grave of your grandparents and put their bones on display because they are no longer individuals? What makes us such? Is it when we can put a name to a bone? What about, then, the tomb of the Unknown Soldier – can we display his bones without worry, because he has no name? Do that. Put him in a case. Stick his skull on a lunch box or a key ring or a postcard; use him to fill your tills. There are double standards here.’
The first look of anger flashed across the Chairman’s face, but it was momentary, and a politician’s smile soon replaced it.
‘No decisions on these matters will be decided today. As I have said I shall look at this petition and pass it on to the spokesperson for pagan affairs; I doubt very much if things will change but I promise you it will be investigated. We have no desire to isolate or insult any individual or group in our policies; however, in cases such as these it may be the benefits of our policy for future generations outweighs the perceived harm inflicted on a few individuals. But I will look into this seriously; had I been approached before now I would have had time to formulate an answer. But if you’d excuse me I have a busy day ahead and there are people here who have worked very hard on this site to share their knowledge with the public, and I wish to thank them and to celebrate today with them, for it is a great achievement and our knowledge of the past has been illuminated much by it, which I’m sure you appreciate.’
And with that he turned.
Con, who had been standing a few feet behind Wolf, looked at the floor uneasily.
As the Chairman turned away one of the Police Officers walked up to Con and asked him to step down and disband the group.
‘Is it illegal to gather here, at a public place?’ Con asked, brows knitted.
‘We don’t want any trouble…’ the officer said.
Wolf, removing the wolf-skin from his head, leaned in close ‘We’re a peaceful gathering; what are we doing wrong?’
‘Just tell your friends to disband; any further gatherings or disruptions to the day will be judged as a disturbance of the peace and will be dealt with firmly.’
His eyes flashing Wolf leaned in close – eye to eye with the Officer.
I am the land; that is all that I am he sung loudly; the Officer winced but maintained eye contact.
I am the land that is all that I am
And then other voices joined in.
I am the land, that is all that I am;
I am the land that is all around me!
Wolf smiled and turned away from the policemen and opened his arms wide to the crowd.
‘Our views have been expressed; the petition handed over – thank you for your support, friends of the ancestors! Now if you’d like to join me in the Red Lion!’
Wolf was laughing, but Con felt subdued. Is this all he had wanted to achieve? The Chairman had been unmoved; like Hayden two nights before he had made a number of good points – but Wolf had been right - had this been a relic of any other religious group then perhaps the Chairman would have very much been treading on eggshells, wary of causing offence. Con could sense Wolf’s frustration. Paganism was not given the same regard as other religions, despite the Chairman’s lip-service. And what of the ancestors wish? Wolf, again, was right – he would have wanted to be with his people. Yet the Chairman had put over his argument well, perhaps too well; this would appear on the news as a colourful disturbance that might liven up a slightly prosaic report on the head of an organisation visiting a newly uncovered burial and a set of bones in a refurbished museum - hardly stirring stuff. Wolf’s protest had moved the story up a few items but not in such way as to help Wolf’s cause. Having said that, as the group began to dissipate, the call for a morning pint being a strong lure, the local news team broke from the Chairman’s group to halt Wolf in his tracks.
But Conall didn’t hear what he was saying, for over the rise of the bank of the circle, walking in the opposite direction to those leaving the protest, he could see Shen – he raised a hand to get Wolf’s attention but the latter was in full flow, and Con left, moving quickly between the protestors who were in no hurry. In a few moments he was within hailing distance, and he found himself suddenly dizzy with happiness. To think that just a few hours before they’d been in the circle, alone, and that he’d backed away from her – not knowing how she felt – and now, having been sick with worry all morning that she had been avoiding him, just see her approaching, to see her smile - an unchecked open smile - was wonderful.
‘Con – God, I’m sorry – I fell back asleep – I… did I miss much?’
Con smiled.
‘Hard to say – you’ll probably see it on the local news later. I don’t know. I don’t know what I expected. He handed over the petition and the chairman said he’d look at it.’
‘Well that’s good then.’
‘But he kind of said it was unlikely. I don’t think the bones are going to be repatriated. I think Wolf will be disappointed.’
‘Poor Wolf. But everything happens for a reason. I’m sure him being here has been for a reason. It’ll be strange when he goes – I’ve quite liked having him around.’
I wonder if she’ll think the same of me, Con thought.
‘When’s he going?’
‘Tomorrow – so one last night at the pub with him, if you’re up to it?’
‘Yeah, of course.’
‘I’ll need a drink by then.’ She said.
‘Hayden?’
She looked at him sidelong.
‘Oh yes.’
‘Not going well?’
‘No.’
Good. He thought.
Chapter 31 The Spiral castle
A pale and dour faced C S Lewis was nursing his coffee cup in the corner of the Red Lion.
‘I am so very sorry, chaps. I wanted to wake well; I am improving, granted, but I feel I have jinxed our trip.’
‘Nonsense.’ replied Barfield. ‘Had we marched on yesterday we would have missed a great deal. Maybe once the stone is put up, you’ll be feeling more chipper; I am counting on it. Tonight, I think, we should climb Silbury Hill and then tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep, we can head to Calne and take the bus to Wells. We shall be in Glastonbury a day later than scheduled, that’s all, and we shall have plenty of time to make it to Porlock.’
‘I do hope so, Owen. I’m rather excited about climbing that hill; I do get the feeling that it wasn’t built to be looked at, but to be climbed. Who is that fellow with Tollers?’
Barfield looked over his shoulder to where Tolkien stood at the bar with a short man in a white collar-less shirt and a cloth cap.
‘I have no idea. I used to think Tollers aloof, but I now see I was wrong; distant, yes, often lost in his own thoughts, but not aloof.’
Barfield refilled Lewis’s coffee cup.
‘I do wish you lived in Oxford, Owen. I’ll never understand why you didn’t pursue an academic career.’
‘Oh, I question it, too, Jack, believe me – I guess it wasn’t meant to be. I didn’t feel I had much choice – family pressures, as you know. But don’t think of me as despairing – when I’m working I do often enjoy it; it’s more a problem when I’m here – with you; then I wish I could write and spend my days on my ideas… but the grass is always greener! You are forever complaining about how little time you get to research, how you have too many tutorials, or essays to mark – of the faculty’s bureaucracy. The picture you paint is at odds with my ideal Oxford, which is what I really yearn for, an ideal.’
Barfield sat in silence, his face shadowing a gamut of internal conflicts.
‘And besides I can write; I have no less time than you or Tollers for that; and what I write no man can threaten to end my tenure if it wonders far from current academic thinking.’
Lewis smiled and nodded. ‘Indeed, Owen. I must say I couldn’t imagine quite what department we would have to shoe-horn you into – English? Philosophy? Religion? Each would be some procrustean bed that it would pain you to lie upon.’
Barfield smiled. ‘Yes, I’m a Romantic in an age when that is frowned upon. Better, then, to weather the stormy seas of my ideas alone, far from the shore, than be smashed to pieces trying to find a safe haven.’
‘Ha! I like that! I’ve never thought of academia as a haven; maybe some isolated cove, its watering places full of washed up old salts!’
‘Speak for yourself’ said Tolkien, sitting himself down beside Barfield. ‘I’ve been speaking to one of the labourers; apparently the last stone took three days to erect, so don’t be expecting to see anything finished today.’
‘Three days?!’ said Lewis. ‘Where’s Merlin when you need him?’
Tolkien and Barfield exchanged a look and laughed.
‘We were saying the exact same thing yesterday,’ Tolkien explained.
‘Now there’s an idea for a book,’ Lewis began, ‘what if Merlin were to reappear in our modern era… why does no-one write the kind of books I want to read?’
‘Then maybe you should write them?’ Tolkien stated.
Lewis nodded, slowly – his eyes focussed beyond his two friends. ‘Maybe I should. Don’t you find that books only go so far? One reads so many books these days that tease, that suggest they’re going to supply something wholesome, fulfilling, but leave one empty! They don’t have the meatiness of the old sagas.’
‘But the old sagas have myth, they have that rich vein of gold on which to draw – most modern writing doesn’t go down beneath the topsoil; it’s surface; windblown, empty. Myth must be at the foundation of a good story – so it resonates, has a sense of depth – like this place…’ Tolkien said, lifting his hand to the window, ‘which is myth set in stone, rather than in letters and ink.’
‘The Boann myth?’ Lewis asked.
Tolkien shook his head.
‘That’s only part of it; that’s a myth for the hill and the river, but I don’t know about here, the circle itself. I don’t yet presume to imagine what went on in the circles themselves, what kind of ritual may have been performed here, nor why.’
Not, he imagined, drunken and lewd rich city men capering to the chant of Pan…
‘I think the medieval legends only help us so far: the Merlin myth may contain elements of older traditions but for the most-part it’s your usual folkloric fare – petrified giants, fighting dragons… if there is deeper myth then it lies well-hidden.’
‘And by deeper myth…?’ Lewis asked.
‘The perennial myth: of losing and finding – of the death and the eucatastrophe!’ Tolkien said, eyes blazing for a moment. ‘That, really, is the core of all great myths.’
‘And true myths…’ Lewis said, referring to a conversation years before when Tolkien and Dyson had persuaded him that the Christ story was exactly that – like the myths and legends he loved, but true.
‘Would you see the myths performed here as being linked to the cycle of the crops, orient and immortal?’ Lewis asked. ‘The circles themselves suggest so, I would say.’
‘Indeed Jack; I can imagine a seasonal ritual held every year here when the April showers have swelled the apple blossom and the crops begun to grow, which, until that time have been held fast in winters embrace – imprisoned in the dark earth, the realm of the dead or of the giants or titans - a treasure held in the dragon’s cave waiting for the killing of the guardian and the release.’
Lewis nodded.
‘There’s something in the return of the warmth and greenery that stirs one’s soul; I imagine it was celebrated from time immemorial, with many different names given to the dramatis personae. One wonders what prefiguration of Christ was worshipped here – do you think a maiden like Persephone, or a youth like Adonis?’
‘Your Sulis, Tollers…was it her? Celtic myth tells us little of dying and rising gods, it would seem – at least on my paltry readings.’
Barfield lent in ‘Charles Williams would know, I’m sure; that’s something you must remember to ask him.’
‘Hmm. I’m sure you’re right. He knows the old Cymric stories best… not that your own knowledge, Tollers, is any less.’ he said on seeing Tolkien’s face fall.
‘Remember that poem by Taliesin he enthused about – the Spoils of the underworld - that told of the prisoner in the underworld, imprisoned in Caer Sidi, the spiral castle, and rescued by Arthur who sails his ship Prydwen through its seven gates.’
‘Careful, you don’t want Petrie to hear that…’ Tolkien joked. ‘Prydwen means ‘white face’ – it’s the sun ship sailing the heavens, like the sun-ship sailing through the body of Nut, the night sky…and the seven gates could well be…’
‘…the seven heavenly bodies that lend their names to the days of the week…’ Lewis added.
‘Precisely. Petrie would no doubt decide this was an old solar Egyptian myth and that Taliesin was heir to the Priests of Amun-Re.’
‘I guess the spiral castle that holds the prisoner is the turning night sky, if the whole enterprise is a celestial one.’ Lewis considered.
‘Or a place from where the night sky is seen turning, so that it feels like it is you who are spinning.’
‘Which, in fact, we are – not that they knew that before Galileo.’ Barfield added. ‘So, the spiral castle might be the sacred temenos from which the turning of the heavens was observed.’
Tolkien nodded; ‘But aside from using the circle as an observatory, it’s hard to see how they might have been used in rites – it doesn’t explain what went on here, any more than the orientation of a church does! I said to Owen last night, Jack, that these sites, especially Stonehenge, remind one of Merlin’s observatory in the woods – where he was said to observe the stars through its 60 doors and windows. Strange that Merlin should also be associated with Marlborough. There must be a link between him, the stars, and these stones.’
Lewis thought a moment. ‘60 doors and windows; it sounds a draughty place.’ Lewis sipped his coffee in thought. ‘He was, of course, imprisoned in stone, wasn’t he – by the fairy woman Vivienne? Or was it Nimue?’
‘Yes, set under stone, or within a crystal cave or island of glass.’ Tolkien said.
‘A strange myth – but not unlike the prisoner in Caer Sidi – wasn’t one of the ‘caers’ of the poem Caer Wydr, the fortress of glass? Was he, I wonder, a form of Merlin, or vice versa?’
‘Remember that Merlin is to be sacrificed at the castle of Vortigern, as a foundation sacrifice, his blood cementing the stones and ensuring they wouldn’t
fall…that surely is the origin of his subterranean burial.’
‘Whereon he finds two dragons fighting…like the image on the font here in Avebury Church.’ Barfield reminded them.
‘It’s all so confusing and muddled,’ grumbled Tolkien, who despite loving the unpicking of myths was feeling the lack of a good college library to follow up his intuitions. ‘I’m sure there is a connection between this place and Merlin, but also, somehow, the Lady of the Waters ought to fit in… where is the Sulis or the Boann of the Merlin myth, the drowned river woman?
Lewis shrugged. We need to interrogate Fraser at Jesus College on our return. I don’t recall such a figure.’
Tolkien nodded, sadly. ‘Me neither. Me neither. But it doesn’t mean she’s not just hiding in plain sight.’
‘And Merlin,’ Lewis asked, ‘’where’s he hiding? In Silbury Hill?’
‘Not according to Petrie.’ Tolkien stated, ‘if the myth is true, he’s going to be under stone, not earth.’
Barfield chuckled ‘And today we’ll see those stones going back in place; let’s hope Keiller isn’t looking for some blood-sacrifice to keep them from falling again.’
Chapter 32: The Glass Prison
There was a queue into the new museum annexe, but the clouds had parted and Con was happy just to be near Shen.
She stood just ahead of him; he looked down at her dark hair bound into a single, long braid; and perhaps she felt him looking for she turned round, and seeing him staring she smiled and frowned and the same time.
‘Are you looking at my hair? It’s a mess. I didn’t have time to wash it…’
‘It looks fine to me.’ He said, embarrassed to have been caught, yet secretly kicking himself for his usual under exaggeration. Her hair was beautiful. She was beautiful. There was something in her bearing, her spirit that enchanted him; rendered him speechless. He felt dull and silent compared to her.
I am so quiet now, he thought. He thought back to an image of himself laughing with Melissa – it seemed a different Conall – carefree, spontaneous, lit-up. Where was his fire now?
A rill of her soft hair rose in the breeze and Conall’s chest quivered.
I’m like that figure in that fairy tale – Faithful John – whose heart is bound in iron fetters, he thought. One day it’s just going to burst. I’ve bound it so that I can’t feel anything anymore – pain or happiness.
Shen turned again and smiled.
‘Finally!’ she said as the queue began to move.
But her words passed Conall by. Her smile that creased up her dark eyes was charming – like a child’s, almost – joyous; and for a tremulous moment Conall’s heart leaped and he was suffused with an emotion that had long deserted him: he was suddenly happy. And in that moment, he lifted his hand, reaching out with the intention of smoothing the hair where it tumbled in the breeze against the back of her head. The idea of running his hands through those locks was exquisite; of touching her lovely head. I could kiss her, he thought. But then the light seemed to fade at the thought of Hayden and of Melissa and of his guilt.
She looked back and frowned. ‘Are you ok?’ she asked.
He nodded. I’m such a fucking coward. I wish I could say fuck you to Hayden and to everything else that’s holding me back. What must she think of me? All she must see is this silent pathetic man – no fire or get up and go – happy to coast along, withdrawn and distant; but inside I’m like a fucking whirlpool of emotion and thoughts... Don’t you know, Shenandoah, that I adore you?
‘You sure? You’re very quiet.’
‘Lots on my mind.’
‘Ahh,…me too.’
‘Anything you want to share?’ he tried.
She looked at him right in the eyes, suddenly serious.
‘No – it wouldn’t be fair.’
‘Try me, I’m a big boy now.’
‘No. It really wouldn’t be. Forget I said anything.’
‘How am I supposed to do that?’
‘You figure it out – you’re a big boy now,’ she replied. Touché.
And internally he was screaming out the question he so wished to ask – was it to do with me?
They remained in silence until they reached the new display, set back into the modern glass and steel annexe that had been built on to the side of the old stone museum.
The walls were covered in dioramas showing the development of the Avebury landscape, inset with brightly lit cubes in which various artefacts were placed: stone axes, decorated pots, heads of corn of the type grown by the ancient farmers of the region.
Shen gazed at a large model that showed tiny people clearing a space in a vast wooded landscape where the henge would one day be.
‘It all looks so pedestrian, so dull, doesn’t it. Scraggy farmers in rough skins. Last night when I imagined it, it was tattooed priests in white robes singing chants to the sky…’ She looked disappointed.
‘But who’s to say your image wasn’t closer to the truth than this?’ Con asked, gesturing to the diorama. ‘If this monument was in India or Meso-America you’d have no trouble finding such reconstructions involving colourful priests. British prehistory is seen as dull, muddy, boring – more Brown Age than Bronze Age…but that’s not how I see it – I think your image is more correct.’
‘There’s an image in one of my books of Mayan, or might be Aztec priests on a flat-topped pyramid; all colours, feathers, it’s just gob-smackingly vivid and beautiful; this lot look like medieval peasants....’ she added.
‘I know. Have you seen those prints of the natives of the Pacific North-West? The ones who make totem poles and that really cool art – like the Kwakiutl, or the Haida? There are these photos of their feasts, and they’re all in these big wooden huts, well, halls, out in the forests – and they’re dressed as spirits, as animals – ravens, killer whales, bears… they’re fucking amazing. That’s what it would have been like here… not three or four peasants in brown wondering round in the mud – but people in masks, in costume; hundreds of them, dancing, in colour – with fire, and booze and singing…’
He looked wistful, and it made her smile.
‘The singing…’ he continued; ‘imagine what songs have been lost… the forgotten carols of the midwinter ceremonies… hymns of the henges.’
Shen lifted an eyebrow in curiosity.
‘You’re right; we don’t think of the music; that there may have been folksongs that these people knew – and sung for hundreds maybe thousands of years…it’s kind of haunting. And sad. Incredibly sad.’
‘That said,’ Con added, smiling, ‘Hymns of the henges sounds like a pretty cool debut album, don’t you think?’.
They had moved around the diorama to where they had a bird’s eye view from West Kennet over Silbury towards the henge.
‘It says here the area may have developed here originally because of the springs.’ Shen said, running a finger down the information panel beside the diorama.
‘I was reading some more of Tolkien’s letters this morning before the protest;’ Con said. ‘He makes the connection between the Kennet and an Irish tale about a goddess who loses an eye drinking from the well of wisdom. He says eye in Irish is Suil; and that Silbury and Swallowhead come from that; and that Kennet means Bright dog after Sirius, and that it’s the Milky Way; wish I’d read these a couple of years ago – might have save me a bit of research time! He’d not linked the Milky Way to the henge itself – but he didn’t have astronomy programs like we now have; but he did link it to the Kennet, just as I did to the Braint. I’ve only read a few of the letters – they’re a bit faded and the handwriting is rather small.’
The museum was crowded and Con and Shen found themselves jostled away from the diorama. Con, annoyed at being forced away from Shen beckoned her to follow him into a less busy corner, beneath a panel describing the many Long-Barrows in the area.
‘Look at this, Shen… remember my dream with the three cows by the stream?’
He was pointing at a plan of Beckhampton Long-Barrow, a tomb that lay at the opposite side of the circle to the sanctuary, beyond the westernmost point of the west Avenue.
'The longstones cove, Shen, points to Beckhampton Long-Barrow – and guess what Beckhampton Long-Barrow had in it?’
‘Three cows?’ she said, half-serious.
‘Yep. three ox skulls. It all fits – the milky river is the Kennet; the 3 magical cows are in Beckhampton; so, although my set in Wales on another level it
applies to a myth behind all these sites.’
‘Jeez. That’s a bit freaky. You should be happy; it’s all corroborating your theory!’
Con smiled weakly. ‘It all seems irrelevant now, somehow, now Mel’s gone.’
‘It wasn’t your fault Con’ she said. Con winced.
‘You’re right, though… it’s a bit freaky. Three cows – I mean, it’s either complete bollocks or it goes way above coincidence; and if so – what the hell does that mean?’
A space had opened up in front of the main display: a reconstruction of the chamber in West Kennet, dark, moody and lit by hidden lamps that cast an eerie glow onto the floor of the mock chamber. It had been done well; minus the incongruous modern glass-roof of the real Long-Barrow the reconstruction was, if anything, more atmospheric than the actual monument.
Here, crouched into one corner lay the skeleton of a man – the bones that Piggott had discovered and that had been hidden away in a museum storeroom until now.
He lay on his right side, his legs drawn up to his chest – the empty eye sockets in the dark shiny skull gazing towards the dull glass that separated him from the queue of visitors; he seemed small, fragile – Con looked hard but couldn’t see any sign of the arrow that had been found in his throat, lodged into one of the bones of his neck, the skeleton was too far away and too shadowed.
‘He seems sad.’ Shen said, crouching to better see him.
Conall nodded in agreement. ‘It’s like a glass prison; I mean they’ve done it well, but it’s a mockery, isn’t it? A false tomb behind glass and he’s just lying there, alone.’
Con knelt to get closer – but still the glass and some three feet of space separated them. He wished he could reach out and place his hand on the bones; connect in some way.
‘He was originally one a mound of bones; and there was a whole goat skeleton nearby, too. This is all a bit clean; sanitised.’
What do you want, Old Man? He thought. What can we do to help? He found himself saying the phrase Alfred Mac Govan-Crow had taught him: Itsipaiitapio’pah; Old Man would not have understood the words, but he would have recognised the sentiment; we are one in the Great Spirit, the Being behind all beings; we are part of the same dance, you and I. I know you; I understand you, Con thought. We are both imprisoned behind a wall of glass; both wanting to be back with those we have loved, to escape and be free again. Why are we here when those we love have died and left us?
The image from the day before rose in his mind – soma, golden, streaming from the wound in the man’s throat - the creative sacrifice; the power and the giving… the act of a god…a shaman….a priest…a wizard…
The empty eyes gazed back saying nothing. Conall stood and rubbed his neck; people were waiting for him to move so they could peer into the darkness as Con had; yet Con resented their intrusion – feeling it was done for macabre and ghoulish entertainment. But he chided himself for judging. I don’t know their reasons or thoughts. Goodbye, Old Man, I wish I could help.
‘Shall we go?’ Shen said.
‘Yes, I think we should – let’s grab a coffee.’
They walked out of the museum and into the neighbouring café in silence; both sad and subdued.
In the queue for coffee, his pent-up thoughts began to tumble out again.
‘When I had the dream I didn’t know about the three cows in Beckhampton, or that the pouring of the milk into the waters was found in myth – nor the horse’s relation to the sun in myth, nor of the alignment of Bryn Celli on the Llanberis pass…’
He suddenly stopped speaking. He had wanted to say he’d gone to enact that dream the night Melissa drowned. But something was stopping him; he remembered he had left Shen at the house with Alfred. He’d been telling Alfred about the constellations. And he’d kissed her goodnight; he had gone back to the van but hadn’t slept, feeling anxious, unsettled, alive, jittery – on the verge of something. He’d felt excited, like a bubble of happiness was rising within him, so he’d walked and come to the river, realising the river had been calling him and in his mind’s eye he’d been seeing the river of his dreams – and there it was, milky with moonlight, but he had stood on the banks and shivered. He didn’t know why he’d gone – the coincidences in the dream – that hinted he was seeing the myth enacted, it had suggested to him he should enter the water; but she had instead. Had some cruel god been asking for sacrifice? He didn’t know; he remembered the sudden strange feeling of dread he’d felt when looking in, that made him shrink from the bank. No – it was coincidence, pure coincidence. But something strange had been going on, was going on; the walls between dream and reality were fading; his fragile grip on reality seeming to be altering; is it my mind that is collapsing or just the laws of time and space - melting into a quantum state of holographic unity? he wondered. Even such a question seemed mad. If someone is trying to tell me something, then who and what and why? Or had whatever it was, perhaps even he himself, sought to warn him years ago, to no avail – a cry from a future desperate to change the course of action that had led to disaster? Then why speak in riddles and myths? Why not just put it plain?
Shen was still waiting for him to finish talking.
‘Oh, fuck this queue,’ he said, frustrated. ‘Let’s catch up later, I think I need to go and lie down or something.’ And it was his turn to walk away without looking back, raising a hand when she shouted out after him.
Chapter 33: The Fort of Emrys
The low cloud that had cooled the morning had lifted, and as the three friends made their way to the north-west quadrant the sun cast crisp blue shadows on the long grass, freshly sprouted. There was a renewed heat to the day, promising to echo that of two days previously when the friends had arrived under unseasonably warm skies.
The circle was a hive of activity; groups of cap-wearing workmen gathered about the sides of the ditch, while a number of special guests, including Flinders-Petrie, and sight-seers, unconnected to the excavations or reconstructions had been attracted by the promise of some kind of show, and the general hub-bub of excitement. These included both local villagers from both Avebury and the Kennet villages south of the river, as well as walkers and those who had chosen to stop here on their way to more distant destinations, giving the goings-on an almost holiday-like feel, in which Keiller, strutting about manically, was the tweed-wearing master of ceremonies.
Rather than give a long speech, Keiller merely waved at the assembled crowd and advised they keep their distance, though thanking them for their interest. After twenty minutes of fixing ropes to the freshly cleaned stone lying on its side, the work of lifting began.
The stone, to the delight of the crowd, lifted a few inches on each of the first dozen attempts, but after a while the act of levering, though visually impressive, with its large wooden levers, blocks, ropes and pulleys, seemed to lift the stone in smaller and smaller increments, and a few of the assembled crowd began to drift away and seek a more sheltered part of the circle.
Tolkien, Barfield and Lewis watched in silence, with the sense that they were witnessing an event the likes of hadn’t been seen in this place for thousands of years.
Then there was a sound like a gun-shot and one of the ropes holding the stone flailed to one side, causing two of the workmen to be thrown to the ground; the stone, that had been raised but three or so feet twisted on its axis churning a deep cut out of the turf and fell back to the floor with a ground-shaking thud. The small crowd surged forward; Keiller strode forward to the stone, while Piggott went to the aid of the workmen, who were laughing but shaken. Flinders-Petrie stood to one side shaking his head and tapping his walking stick onto the ground impatiently. Beside him stood a small woman in, Tolkien guessed her sixties or seventies, her long grey hair tied back in a bun.
Petrie and Keiller exchanged a few words, and shook hands; the former then strode through the crowd with the lady following him, leaving Keiller seemingly torn between following the old man and returning to the re-adjustment of the ropes; Keiller was hopping from foot to foot, then throwing his hat on the grass he turned back to the stone, chagrined.
Lewis turned to Tolkien with raised brows; ‘This looks as if it’s going to take a while; shall we take a stroll?’
Tolkien nodded. ‘It does indeed; the process is rather too mechanical for me, anyway – ropes and pulleys, concrete – the ancients didn’t use concrete…’ he bristled, eyeing the sacks of the stuff lined up ready by the empty hole ready to secure the stone in place.
‘No..’ came a low female voice behind them; ‘…the blood of a fatherless virgin was much more effective!’
Tolkien turned, surprised; there, standing a few paces behind, was a burly and commanding figure of a woman, stocky in a high collared fur coat and woollen bonnet; his first impression was of a head mistress, but there was a spark in her dark eyes that betrayed a wit and fire; she smiled.
‘Violet Mary Evans, and this’… she gestured to a tall man at her side, ‘Dr Thomas Penry Evans. I was of course referring to rites long forgotten.’
Tolkien introduced his party swiftly; ‘I thought you were talking of Merlin.’
‘Yes, he’s part of the tradition. The old ones will demand a sacrifice if these stones are to stand.’
Tolkien ignored the wide-eyed look Lewis flashed him.
‘Let us hope not Mrs Evans.’
She smiled. ‘I see blood under the stones; perhaps this has already happened, so we are all safe from that fate today.’
The three friends shared uneasy looks, and Lewis fought hard not to betray a smile. All the while the grey eyes of Mrs Evans coolly observed them, creasing at the edges at the men’s discomfiture.
The stalemate was broken by Owen Barfield, who took a step forward and introduced his party to the new arrivals.
‘We are here by accident, it seems – we had meant to be already long gone.’
‘Back to your dreaming spires?’
‘Porlock; that is we intend to arrive in Porlock in a few days’ time but we have been delayed; we should, by now, have been way past Calne – perhaps we may have even reached Wells by now. And we would have been in Glastonbury in the next day or two.’
Mrs Evans smiled.
‘Deo non fortuna…’ she quipped; ‘God not luck; you shall still be in Glastonbury – it is where we two are headed and we have room in our car for all three of you if you wish to take me up on the offer.’
‘Why that would be most kind!’ beamed Lewis. ‘Only we must first let our host know – we had arranged to stay this night and all our belongings are in the boarding house…’
‘Don’t worry. There is no rush. We would have driven past but I was tiring and we had thought to stop a few hours and perhaps set off again after tea…’
Barfield had stood silently since the offer had been made with a curious expression playing across his features as if he wished to say something but was holding back.
‘A fatherless virgin you said…’
Mrs Penry Evans turned and smiled.
‘Indeed.’
‘It’s just that Professor Tolkien here was asking some questions regarding the stones and Merlin just last night.’
Tolkien shifted uneasily from foot to foot; Owen was clearly wishing for Tolkien to take up his story, and he so hated being put on the spot.
Tolkien coughed and mumbled;
‘I was thinking of the name Marlborough and its derivation from Merlin’s barrow; it refers to the smaller cousin of Silbury in the grounds of Marlborough school – however, it just struck me as odd that in Geoffrey of Monmouth Merlin is credited with the building of Stonehenge; I wondered if perhaps a similar tale was once told of this place, too. Perhaps the later enchanter’s name has been inserted in a very ancient story that spoke of the origins of all such sites.’
‘Merlin, I believe, was a title rather than a given name.’ Mrs Penry Evans stated flatly. ‘The one who built these monuments first bore that title, one that many men later claimed. You see it means ‘man from the sea’ and the first Merlin did indeed come from over the sea and brought the wisdom to build these sites with him.’
Man from the sea… Tolkien bit his tongue; he half-agreed – the name stemmed from the old name for Carmarthen, Moridunum, the fort by the sea – and probably meant ‘the man from Moridunum’, the equivalent of calling himself ‘Bloemfontein’…
Lewis, who was becoming more his old self as the day progressed, turned to Tolkien and raised an eyebrow. Tolkien ignored him.
‘Geoffrey does say that Merlin brought the stones from Killaraus in Ireland, I’ll give you that,’ Tolkien relied; ‘but I’ve been having a long think on the matter…’ he paused, wondering whether to continue. Lewis gave Barfield a look that said here we go… while the Penry-Evans’ were looking at Tolkien with genuine interest.
‘Geoffrey’s name for Merlin is Merlin Ambrosius, or Myrddin Emrys, if we use the Welsh.’ Tolkien cleared his throat again and looked at the floor, before raising his head and flashing a quick smile.
‘Stonehenge is near Amesbury and that name is thought to derive from Ambrosius Aurelianus, the 5th century war leader and victor at Mons Badonicus – but maybe the name is older…’ he grinned again ‘and belongs not to the town but to the Stones; Amesbury being simply the town closest to the Fort of Ambrosius – a rather poetic name for Stonehenge. Of course, it is no fort, but ‘bury’ often also means burial place of barrow, such as here at Silbury. And if Ambrosius is Merlin Ambrosius, or Myrddin Emrys, then the name Emrys’bury’ is more than fitting for a site said to have been built by Merlin as a grave-marker for the Britons slain by the Saxons.’
Lewis, who had feigned disinterest, had found his interest suddenly piqued. ‘Bravo, Tollers! I’d never thought of that.’
‘Oh it gets better, Jack! Due to the law of mutation in the Welsh language an m mutates into a v meaning that both Avebury and Amesbury could arguably derive from Emrys’ burial place. The coincidence of that suggests we’re not looking at a name based on a 5th century warlord, but an earlier derivation from a precursor to the Merlin Ambrosius of legend, who lent his name to both sites, way, way back in prehistory when both sites were built.’
‘You’re saying that Stonehenge and Avebury once bore the same name?’ Lewis asked, seeking clarification for his friend’s bold statement.
‘Yes, I am. The burial place of Emrys.’
Mr Penry-Evans, who had taken a back seat throughout the discussion, now stepped forward, and said, in a sing-song South-Walian accent.
‘of course, you may wish to claim him for your own but Merlin, or as we should more properly cal, him Myrddin Emrys was a Welshman, as I’m sure you know. And he was taken to a place named Dinas Emrys in North Wales to be sacrificed so that the collapsing castle of King Vortigern would stand; but before his blood was shed he discovered the true cause – the red and white dragons fighting in a cave beneath the castle…’
Just then the stone which had been hauled up again a couple of feet fell back to the earth with a grinding thud.
‘There’s your collapsing castle, Mr Penry Evans!’ Tolkien laughed. ‘Such a tale is often used to explain the precarious condition of standing stones… and as for your Dinas Emrys – does not this also mean ‘fort of Ambrosius’ as do Amesbury, and, as we have just concluded, Avebury? In reminding us of the story of Dinas Emrys, good Sir, you have demonstrated that this is yet another version of the same myth! Perhaps before being set in the fastness of Snowdonia the Emrys myth was set within a ring of collapsing stones in Wessex… a Bronze Age myth carried from here to the mountain refuges of the fleeing Cymru…’
‘Except for one difference…’ the jovial Welshman added, seemingly not chagrined at a national myth being so bowdlerized by the stocky Sais, ‘according to the Welsh triads Emrys was said to be buried at Dinas Emrys; you see, before Geoffrey of Monmouth we are perhaps looking at an original tale where the youth did not survive – where, unlike Merlin, he was killed and the stones were indeed cemented by his blood. If this place is Dinas Emrys, perhaps Merlin lies waiting to be discovered here?’
‘I say wouldn’t that be marvellous!’ It was Keiller – who had approached during Penry Evan’s rejoinder. ‘Apologies for interrupting but I am a sucker for old folklore and legends, and I’m afraid I only caught the tail end of this particular exposition!’
He grinned at them all, clutching his hat in his hands.
‘Might I be so bold as to ask if you would all wish to resume this topic over a sherry and luncheon tonight at the Manor? I do so miss decent conversation! There is room at the Manor should any of you wish to stay.’
Before the logistics of possible leaving times and driving arrangements could be discussed Mrs Penry Evans fixed the school-boyish man with her matronly eyes, and strode forward and took his hand; she smiled slowly. ‘Yes, that would be perfect.’
‘Well this seems a bit of luck,’ Lewis said as an aside to Tolkien. ‘We don’t have to pack; we get an invitation to a dinner, and a lift in the morning to our destination without having to break sweat.’ The latter man nodded, but it was Barfield who answered. ‘Not luck, God, as the lady said. Deo non fortuna.’
‘But which God?’ Lewis asked, as the sprightly capricious Keiller hopped away back to where the workmen were seeking to re-attach the ropes to the stone;
‘this place seems full of them.’
‘Was Emrys a god, originally, do you think?’ Barfield asked Tolkien.
The latter scratched his chin. ‘One god or two.’
‘Why so?’ Lewis asked, frowning.
‘You see, I don’t see how the original Emrys would derive from Ambrosius…a Roman name, if the naming of these sites predates the Roman period. The original name, which later became Emrys, ought to be closer to the Ave or Ame remembered in the place names, and as far as I can see there’s just one candidate…’ he paused for effect.
‘He does this on purpose, Owen.’ Lewis said, irritated, poking Tolkien with his walking stick.
Tolkien laughed. ‘Think – the killing of the youth to keep the stones from falling, it’s clearly a foundation sacrifice, and such legends are usually old creation myths twisted out of shape or half-remembered. Like the Greek Titans who become the earth; Emrys’s killing is a cosmogonic act – and the nearest we have in the Old North is the killing of Ymir, the giant.’
Lewis’s ears pricked up at the mention of Nordic myths, his childhood favourite.
‘From Ymir's flesh the earth was formed,
and from his bones the hills,
the heaven from the skull of that ice-cold giant,
and from his blood the sea…’ he intoned. ‘Ymir’s bury…Amesbury… Good God, man! It does seem to fit!’
’And Ymir means...?’ Tolkien asked, as if testing his students back in Merton College.
Lewis shrugged. ‘I ought to know, I’m sure it’s been discussed.’
‘Twin.’ Tolkien said. ‘It means Twin.’
Chapter 34: A serpent in Paradise
Two days before at this hour Con had sat in the sanctuary on Overton hill; now he sat in the shade of a great sarsen stone, one of a pair that marked the opposite end of the Avebury complex; if the sanctuary was the serpent’s head then Con now sat at its tail, beside Adam, a small distance from Eve, the last remaining stones of what had been called the Beckhampton Avenue.
He had left Shen outside the museum. The memories of Melissa had upset him; he needed time alone to think, and so he had made his excuses and left.
The sun was high, and there was little breeze. The cool of the early day had lifted, and as he walked along the newly mown cornfields swifts screeched overhead. The main circle had been busy; a few tourist coaches had arrived, and Wolf’s pagan friends had continued their gathering – having eaten and drunk at the pub they had gathered in the southern half of the circle where the great obelisk had once stood and were drumming and singing. It was this that had driven Con to walk the opposite direction; the fields running along the former Avenue were deserted; save for Adam and Eve no single stone remained of this half of the avenue, hence its unpopularity with visitors; and to his shame Con in all his visits here had not made this particular trip.
Adam was the largest of the two stones, the last remaining of a four-strong rectangular cove of stones that had marked the end of the Avenue, while Eve, a smaller pillar, was part of the avenue – and ironically, thought Con, was of the male pillar type stone of which half the Avenue consisted, the other being the vulva-shaped diamond stones.
Man and woman, he though - that divine pairing, the great opposites in the perennial war, the battle of the sexes. It’s that war which dominates most people’s lives, he thought, nestling into the stone trying to get comfortable in its shade, not good and evil, life and death. Here, set in stone, walking, no, dancing along the avenue, it was celebrated: the great war of misunderstanding and the interplay of love and lust that drove the creation of the human species. Women on one side and men on the other.
He sat upright and rolled himself a cigarette.
Are the stones paired or opposites, he wondered. But how was he supposed to know how Neolithic man had thought? Were the great rows of stones humans or gods?
Con scrabbled round his pockets for his lighter – an ergonomic smooth silver one that had been a gift from his sister. He took a deep drag and exhaled. On the side of the lighter, engraved, was the word Puck.
‘You still in there, Puck?’
Her voice.
A lifetime ago.
And his grumbling return: ‘I told you not to call me that.’
Puck.
It had been a different Con. Yet here he was, walking the same places, seeing the same vistas, through the same eyes, yet not his. Theirs. Over twenty years before.
Stepping off the train at Bristol, with their rucksacks – his weighed down with their tent – hers with her mandolin strapped to the back; excitedly finding the bus that would take them to Glastonbury. Gods – it had been magical – that summer between their O and A level exams – 17 years old, and full of the promise that youth offered, and travelling – having picked out the sites that Melissa had identified as ‘magical’; Glastonbury first, then they’d go to Stonehenge and then Avebury.
It came to him now in flashes of memory – the first enchanting view of Glastonbury Tor rising like a pyramid over the slate-grey levels, faded with morning mist; the shops, heady with incense, and tie-die clothes – a strange aesthetic of east meets folk-soaked west, that Con found too rich for his tastes. Then to sit on the Tor, that castle of winds, back to the tower, watching the sun go down – long-haired hippies on each side, chanting, drumming; it felt almost laughable, like a joke – someone’s idea of a 60’s fancy-dress party…
‘The drums…’ one man had said to him, ‘just belong here, you know?’.
No. He didn’t know. He felt awkward; yet then the rhythmic thumping took him somewhere beyond thought, and he realised he did know. And the words of a poem Mel had taught him sang out in his head
I am a stag of seven tines
I am a flood across a plain
I am a wind on a deep lake…
The night before – having packed their gear, almost nauseous with excitement, she had spun on the spot, saying how they’d set up a shrine to Lord Frith (she’d been reading Watership Down) on the Tor… ‘and to Lady Moonlight… and you’ll be Puck and I’ll be Titania!’ she laughed.
‘The drums, Puck!’ she winked at him, just 24 hours later, gilded by the setting sun, ‘they just belong here, Man!!!’ and he could see she was in her element.
Puck and Titania. Two curly-haired teens, wide-eyed, one pair dark, the other blue, walking from sacred hill to sacred well; and ever, in her clutches, a copy of Robert Graves’s ‘The White Goddess’ – her Bible, as she called it. Her magical tome; a book of enchantments – a grimoire, and for him too – a much longed-for desire, a muse like those that had inspired Graves; teenage desires pent-up through shyness and insularity and channelled into an image of ideal femininity, and given voice as he looked skywards, neck cricked back, taking in the stars
Ceridwen; Inanna; Ishtar; Isis; Freyja; Danu
That night, in Avalon, the Tor now invisible against the darkness, she had sat by the gas-lantern and played a song she’d written to the lyrics of Graves’s translation of the Song of Amergin.
I am a stag of Seven Tines…
Three years later it was being played on Radio One. The White Goddess, her first properly recorded studio album, while not top ten, had, nevertheless, become a minor cult classic. Con was in the final year of his University degree in astronomy; but things had changed. And to think there had been a time when he’d dreamed of a goddess and a river of milk and seen it as a sign from Her… Jesus! How fucking mad had that been?
When had it changed? There was the academic pressure, for a start. The prohibition against making a statement that couldn’t be considered a proven fact. Also the sense that he had no idea who he was as an individual, so that now, separated from Mel for the first time in their lives, he felt a need to mark out his own territory and to proclaim his individuality. He had always been ‘one of the twins’ and now the very mention of that sickened him. But mostly it was a sudden sense he had had, one evening, walking in the woods near his digs – a sense of despair, of feeling he was born thousands of years too late… of hating modernity; of feeling he didn’t fit – that everyone else was in life and he was just an observer. He felt a great yearning for a past he’d never lived. He felt such isolation, watching his contemporaries swagger about within life with no difficulty; talking about sport and music and films, and their conquests… and he felt mute; the poems he’d learned with his sister offered no currency in that world, offered no advantage in finding his own goddess of flesh and blood.
That awful night he thought about leaving – leaving university – perhaps even leaving life… but caught himself in the act; a cold sweat flooded his body and he suddenly saw himself as this pale, repressed nobody; as hovering on the edge of madness, and in an act of despair he threw his past from him as if it were a venomous snake. At the same time, he threw himself into life, into modern music and all the delights of materialism. Mel didn’t like the change, calling him an ‘angry young man’ but he felt solid, suddenly, like he had become visible, real. His old books locked away, replaced by books on science.
One evening of the summer holidays when they were back home, their many rows reached a head.
‘But it’s bollocks, Graves made it all up.’ Con was saying, wagging a finger at the booklet of notes that Melissa had had printed for the inside of her White Goddess CD.
‘You don’t know that.’ She retorted, hurt.
‘He did – it’s all misinterpretation and bullshit; he’s making his own myths. It doesn’t mean it’s not valid as a system… it’s just not true.’
‘What is truth?’ she pouted.
‘Not. This.’ He said.
‘Puck…’
‘Don’t fucking call me that.’
‘Why are you being such an arsehole?’ she shouted, hurt.
‘I’m not. I just don’t believe in all this poetic, mystic shit anymore. I’m not a kid. It’s all airy-fairy bollocks. It’s just not true. It’s like all this goddess rubbish…’
‘Have you forgotten your dream?’ she said.
‘It was just a dream, Mel. I read an article on the whole 60s goddess movement – Graves, Gimbutas, the works – it’s all based on a phoney premise – there’s no evidence for some Great Goddess. It’s feminist propaganda.’
‘Then what are all those Neolithic female figurines of?’ she countered.
‘They’re not all female – and they could be anything… dolls…I don’t know, prehistoric porn…’ despite his fervour he felt odd hearing these academic statements pouring out from his own mouth – statements he’d baulked against when first he’d read them. And here he was, their words coming out of his mouth. But surely they were better than lies, than false evidence?
‘Well maybe they’re gods and goddesses…shared, like Adam and Eve…’
‘Except Adam and Eve…’
‘I bloody know Con!’
Con shrugged. ‘It’s just that you look at Indo-European myth and it’s pretty much creator gods, all the way down.’
‘Well it would be, wouldn’t it? It’s HIS-story Con, written by the victors…’
Con raised his eyes at her comment. ‘Oh please, Mel…HIS-story, really?! So, they just erased the goddess from the old myths? That’s very convenient...’
Mel shot him a glare ‘Yes, I think that’s precisely what happened. And why not?! You’ve managed it…’
He baulked at that, remembering three postcards of goddesses he’d bought on holiday in Greece, and put above his bed – long since removed and shoved into a cupboard, where he’d flinch each time he’d chance upon them, a twinge of shame, a reminder of a naive and wasted time.
She had lent forward and tried to touch his cheek, her own cheeks stained with her tears.
‘You still in there, Puck?’
Those times passed, and Mel and Con learned to get along again, at first by knowing what not to discuss, but later through accepting that their differences didn’t mean they didn’t still have that shared sense of ‘twinness’ they had always shared; one thing remained changed, though – she never called him Puck again. As he grew older, he mellowed. That anger that had been his attempt to grasp life with both hands, a life that had threatened to slip away unlived, faded as he felt more at home with normal modern life; he had relationships, jobs, and felt the easy mediocrity of his peers consume him. He no longer felt estranged, nor on some manic trajectory that would have set him among the stars, probably on antipsychotics or living in a shed in the woods with a gaggle of stray dogs.
Then came their visit to Bryn Celli Ddu. No longer irritated by her kookiness, he had, for a moment under that October sky, felt a glimmer of their early years, and instead of flinging it away from him like poison, had enjoyed the feeling, like one might linger over an old cherished photograph. But in the days that followed he had felt a change occurring; his own research, his beloved science, had started to illuminate facts about the site and the possible lore associated with it that seemed to open wider that faintest of cracks in his façade that had first appeared the night in Bryn Celli. Like the secret enjoyment of a guilty pleasure, akin to re-reading a favourite childhood book, he had allowed waves of old feelings to wash over him; and it was all okay, he told himself, because this was science… his research was based in fact – and if it suggested, somehow, Mel’s precious White Goddess may have been associated with these sites, then he was happy for her… though bemused for himself. For the first time in years he allowed himself to think of the dream – once a signpost of belief – now a signpost to provable fact – an alignment with the midwinter sun, the archaeologically proven link between sun and horse in prehistoric iconography… and the image of the Milky Way, suggesting an alignment he could validate using plans and computer software.
Last spring he’d come back – back to Avebury, where, following their journey to Glastonbury as teenagers, they had arrived that glorious summer of ’88, walking the Avenue to the circle, marvelling at its size, a site, prior to the internet, they had only seen in old books. There, aiming to sleep the night in the circle, they had walked and walked, until they found themselves on the north-east part of the great bank, looking out over the circle, under a spray of stars – the summer night warm and without even a breeze; the earth was hard and cracked under Con’s fingers; the grass thin and parched.
‘Somewhere out there some poor woman is destined for you, Puck.’ Mel had said.
‘Charming!’ he’d scoffed, but inside he’d felt as if he’d inhaled a ball of pure happiness, that fizzed and sparked, and he’d lifted his eyes heavenwards and felt like crying with the joy of it.
None more blessed than the triple goddess He mouthed.
Coming back last year had been like a pilgrimage; an admission that something within him had altered; that the frosty, flint-hard Con had begun to thaw – and that somewhere, deep within, the wild-haired, open-eyed Puck might re-emerge, no longer afraid of not fitting in. For, he now reasoned, had not his disgust at modern life, his feeling of being at odds with his peers, originated in a genuine value judgement of western living that had reckoned it as lacking? Was not his baulking at the dull everyday life of his peers a visceral qualitative judgement – one he could not help but feel? As a teenager it had troubled him greatly, and he had thought the fault had lain within himself – but had not Melissa and himself, through their love of the old poems, just chanced on a better way of seeing the world – one that was animistic in character – almost mystic in its vision in which all was Holy, the trees, the birds, the rivers and streams. And to come back here, having resumed after over a decade’s break, his old vegetarian lifestyle, willing to look about him at stone, stream and star and see reflected in it, no, present within it, some unseen pattern, the hand of not pure scientific chance, but the cool, white hand of that goddess who had been lost to him… and to find her, or so it had seemed, in Shen…brave enough, now, to follow the demands of his soul, and not to run scared from an internal voice that demanded he be different…
Melissa had died. And Con had found himself cast from one extreme to another. Wishing, above all, to feel they might have been connected, that the old ways of thinking might be true – but being thrown again and again upon the spear of misery and doubt; of ‘truth’ that said, no, there was no connection, no meaning; she had died and he was implicated, if not directly, then indirectly in her death through acts not done rather than done. And the dream and the pursuit of its meaning had been but pipedream; a childish game, allowing his objectivity to slip out of some misguided sense of nostalgia. He hated himself. Hated all that seemed to remind him of these mistakes. He had lost a sister; he had lost his love and now, for the second time, he had lost himself, his true self: Puck; the wild-eyed boy who might dance under the stars. Lost, but not forever, he reasoned. Just trapped again, imprisoned, like the sun; trapped in the cave; crushed under the stone – and any sense of life and joy, trapped, gagging, in the throat, unable to be released, kept captive by circumstance and fear. Trapped in the coils of the flint-hard persona that Con had become.
I have forgotten how to just be me. And when I do feel him rising, I fight against it as one would fight down nausea; scared of what might emerge. I pull down the stones on my own head.
Suddenly he thought of the roughly clad men in the print in the restaurant, pulling ropes muddy with slimy dirt; sweating and cursing against the crude stones; it was an image at odds with the name of the two stones by which he sat – Adam and Eve; Eden, the place of creation, where the divine substance poured into the world – where the serpent bought wisdom, and where god walked in the cool of the day… paradise.
Con looked at Eve leaning in the afternoon haze. And I would have my Eve if ever she would want me; oh life! Sometimes the opposites were hard to bear; he imagined Shen dancing between himself and Hayden, in a long white robe, flowers in her long dark hair, flitting between the opposites; Hayden representing all that he previously had been, his words that night at the pub so easily could, just a couple of years ago, have been Con’s own. But which, amongst these opposites, Con asked, is the god, and which the demon? I see him as the bastard, the evil one – the serpent in paradise, but it is I who are static, whose life lies dead in me like a dried husk.
I, thought Con, am the serpent; I am Vrtra.
Chapter 35 The Wave
‘I see your appetite is coming back’ Barfield quipped as Lewis began tucking in to his ham and eggs.
‘I have some catching up to do’ was Lewis’s reply as he lifted a laden fork to his mouth.
Tolkien and Barfield had ordered bread, cheese and pickles, along with most of Keiller’s labourers, who now filled the Red Lion to overflowing.
Mr and Mrs Penry-Evans had followed Lewis’ example, explaining they had left London at eight that morning and hadn’t stopped even for a cup of tea.
‘We were following the Great West Road had meant to stop at Stonehenge,’ Violet said, ‘even though I often think it an unwelcoming place, but we found it somewhat overrun with certain undesirable individuals and so we decided to carry on to Devizes and stop here – a rather impromptu decision, and hardly on our route, but worth, I think, the detour, don’t you, Tom?’ she added, petting the hand of her partner.
‘Undesirable?’ asked Lewis.
‘Yes; a group of fascists - they’d passed us after we had left London, they were on motorcycles, driving like devils and nearly forcing us off the road. They had armbands on, with the BUF logo on it – how dare they use the colours of our flag to create that damn abomination!’
Mr Penry-Evans continued the tale.
‘Well, there must have been nearly a dozen of them, clambering over the stones; Violet wanted to tell them to leave but I didn’t advise it. It is enough to have to deal with that sort of behaviour in London – though things have been better of late since their failed demonstration.’
Mrs Penry-Evans poured herself another strong cup of tea and returned to her ongoing conversation with Tolkien.
‘So you think the serpentine shape of the temple here is what is really meant by the discovery of the fighting dragons in Merlin’s story?’ She asked.
‘I think it has to be considered.’ Tolkien said, shrugging. ‘But I’m not as convinced as Stukeley was over the serpentine form…But what has to be fathomed is, if the pair of dragons, at least in later versions, represent the conflict between Welshman and Saxon, if we are forced to look beyond the Dark Age date when Geoffrey believed the tales to be set, and go further back in time – what might this conflict represent? Perhaps a clash between earlier cults? The Neolithic circle-makers vs the Bronze Age metalworkers on their steeds, for example?’ his mind flashed back to two days prior, seated on the barrows of the horse-lords overlooking the Kennet valley; ‘After all, who leads the attack in the medieval version but Hengist and Horsa, stallion and horse – might these pair have been attached at a later point upon an earlier prehistoric myth of the taking over of these sites by the horse-riders? And if, as your husband says, Emrys originally died, might we be seeing the death of a native priest or leader at the hands of the new arrivals? Might a prehistoric Merlin have really existed and been killed at such a site?’
'It’s an interesting idea.' she said.
'And we see such conflicts in many myths –' Tolkien continued, 'the Aesir vs. the Vanir in Norse mythology, the gods vs. the titans in Greek. It’s one set of gods taking over the role of an earlier – usually the earth and fertility gods being overcome by the new gods, the Olympians, the warriors. Now, the trouble with such an interpretation is that one might also define the struggle as a seasonal one – the gods of summer achieving victory over winter, and freeing the fertility the winter has imprisoned….’
‘But cannot it be both?’ Barfield suggested; ‘a new cult using the old myth of seasonal victory to justify its subjugation of the old?’
Tolkien nodded. ‘Yes, that is true – the question is how one might distinguish between them in such a case… it is tempting, here, where we know one cult overtook another, to read the myth in terms of history, and Merlin as the defeated priest of the circles.’
'I, too, see Merlin as a priest of a very old religion' Mrs Evans stated.
'How old is old?' Lewis asked.
She paused for a second before answering. 'Atlantean.'
'And on what evidence would you base such a wild statement?' Lewis asked, snorting, clearly incredulous of the idea.
Violet Penry-Evans smiled.
‘Oh, nothing that would satisfy an academic such as yourself, Professor Lewis,’ she said. ‘I refer to a number of occult traditions, traditionally handed down in the West rather than to any historical source.’
‘That is a given, I would say, seeing as the only historical source one could refer to is Plato’s Timaeus, and that is an allegory. His Atlantis is a myth and I suppose will remain so until some deep-sea explorer finds temple ruins in the Atlantic, beyond the Pillars of Hercules.’ Lewis answered.
‘To those adepts of the occult tradition, what we call the Western Mystery Tradition, Atlantis is a given – not something to be confirmed by finding pillars on the sea bed, but through experience.’
‘Such as?’
‘Dreams and visions,’ she looked wistful. ‘I have dreamed of the destruction of the great temple of Cerne, and of a great wave sweeping over the land. And this was not something I had read, no! The dream of the wave engulfing the land I first had when I was four years old; and it has never left me.’
Tolkien blanched. Lewis snorted. Barfield took a sip of his beer then spoke.
‘You’ll have to forgive Professor Lewis, Mrs Evans; he has a great interest in occult tradition, but cannot bring himself to examine its claims with anything like the scientific open mind he possesses for other topics; he’s a man standing on the shore of a great ocean, wishing to swim but daring not even put a toe in the water!’ he winked at Lewis. ‘Do not mistake his attitude as snide cynicism; it is a defence against temptation…’
‘Balderdash, Owen. All our discussions on occultism and your peculiar attraction to the theories of Steiner have not altered my opinion one jot,’ Lewis countered, flustered at his friend’s comments. ‘I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – Steiner is a great man to consult about manure but not about metaphysics!’
Barfield chuckled. ‘Steiner’s interest in organic farming stems from his thoughts on the Atlanteans, whom he saw as possessing what you would call a magical affinity with plants and the natural world as a whole.’
Lewis swallowed his beer and shook his head. ‘Poppycock, Owen.’
Mrs Penry-Evans was regarding Barfield with interest.
‘So you’re an anthroposophist? I admit I find many of Steiner’s ideas intriguing.’
Barfield nodded. ‘I find his work challenging and stimulating; he does not, for example, seek to root Atlantis in conventional history; rather he offers an alternative view of the past; a different idea of creation altogether, with mankind eventually coalescing into solidity from a creature of mist and air, almost.’
‘Yes,’ Mrs Penry-Evans said ‘he suggests we look at creation in another plane, and that gradually mankind entered the material plane from a higher spiritual one. And Atlantis belongs to that higher state, hence the futility of looking for underwater ruins…’
As Barfield and Mrs Penry-Evans delved deeper into anthroposophical metaphysics Lewis turned to Tolkien who had been listening intently to what the others had been saying.
‘Creatures of mist and air, eh? I suppose as a myth it’s as good as any, worthy of the pre-Socratics, hmm? But it certainly says nothing about the real foundations of this world.’
Tolkien looked at him sidelong.
‘Do you really think that, Jack? Myth is not some arbitrary story plucked out of thin air; there is an undercurrent in myth that is rooted in a reality far more meaningful than mere history.’
Lewis nodded. ‘Yes, I was being flippant, I suppose, Tollers; one has only to think of the myth of the dying and rising godman, a precursor of the life of Christ, to see that. So, Atlantis, you would say, was true - in a mythical sense?’
Tolkien nodded. ‘Indeed. Is not the destruction of Atlantis also the Fall from Eden – the fall from a state of grace thanks to a deed that sought to acquire wisdom for the sake of power? The men of Atlantis were accused of hubris; of seeking to control the elements, with forging a science that upset the balance of the natural world and brought about disaster; these myths are complimentary, Atlantis and Eden.’
‘But then, as I said, not historical.’
‘Perhaps they were; how are we to know? Perhaps when one goes far enough back there is no difference – perhaps history, as we understand it, the hard world of facts, really is somehow new, coalesced out of something other…’ Tolkien’s eyes seemed to fog over. In his head he was seeing the dream he had had since childhood – a vast towering wave bearing down over green fields, destroying everything in its wake. And this lady, too, he was thinking, shares the dream. Are we dreaming the same myth, plucking the same fruit from the tree of the imagination, or are we seeing glimpses of something that really happened – and if so, how? A message sent from the past, or a memory from some past existence?
Tolkien’s eyes refocused to find his gaze met by Mrs Penry-Evans.
‘Professor Tolkien – tell me what you are thinking.’ She said.
He hesitated, but then seemed to find his voice as he filled his pipe.
‘The Atlantis myth has always…fascinated me; I have, I am embarrassed to say, have been haunted by a nightmare since childhood; a dream… your dream.’
Mrs Penry-Evans nodded. ‘I sensed it, which is why I asked. Merlin was a priest who escaped that destruction, I believe. It’s in his very name: he is Merlin, from an original Myrddin – 'he of the fortress in the sea'; and his companion was Morgan: 'born of the sea'.’ Her eyes seemed to be peering over distant shores; distant in both place and time.
‘And they came here, you say?’ asked Lewis, sounding sincere, as if wanting to atone from his earlier mocking stance.
‘I think they brought their wisdom out of the drowned land and established it here; in the west; I believe they founded ancient Avalon, when it was still an island in the inland sea. We have our own Atlantis legends here in the west, you know – tales of Caer Ys and lost Lyonesse; tales of haunting beauty ’
And the great kings of Wessex
Wearied and sank in gore,
And even their ghosts in that great stress
Grew greyer and greyer, less and less,
With the lords that died in Lyonesse
And the king that comes no more.
Violet Penry-Evans recited – the very lines of Chesterton Tolkien had intoned above the Hakpen horse two days before.
‘And you think this knowledge was placed in temples such as these?’ asked Barfield, gesturing out of the window at the stones. ‘Encoded, somehow?’
‘As Professor Tolkien said earlier – these sites were built by Merlin, they bear his name - Emrys. So perhaps written into the stones themselves is a memory of the flood, and a record of the knowledge that was lost to it.’
An image floated up in Tolkien’s imagination – that Irish myth of the flooding of the river Boyne after Boann had sought to obtain the wisdom from the well of Nechtan… that, surely, was another example of the hubristic search for knowledge that had led to disaster – a disaster taking the form of a flood. That myth had been writ large in the place names hereabouts, the name of Sulis, the goddess of the sun-eye, remembered in hill and well; but was this myth, the drowning of Boannd, myth, pure myth, or a memory of some historical fall? Was it a myth of creation or some dimly recalled history? Or might it be both? Mrs Penry-Evan’s description of Merlin bringing the knowledge of the drowned temple of Atlantis to these lands after the flood seemed on the one hand wishful thinking, an occult fiction, yet there was a connection here he couldn’t quite fathom: Why, he asked himself, do I dream of that same flood? What is it that drives me? A need to rediscover what has been lost? My goal has ever been to recreate, to retell our lost mythical past; the lost myths of England that didn’t survive the coming of Augustine or the Norman Conquest, and so I looked to see what I could uncover. And that’s how it seems: recovery – not invention; I’ve always felt as if I’m rediscovering some long-forgotten truth; an archaeologist of myth Owen called me. But my search isn’t just a dry academic venture; strange though it sounds, I feel as if I’m trying to remember home; I’m trying to find a place I belong. Hiraeth, the Welsh call it, a kind of longing or homesickness; only this is a wish to return to a place I have never been – never could have been, for it was lost to the flood aeons ago, before the world was reshaped, and the straight road bent…
Chapter 36 Twinned
‘Read this!’ Con said, pushing the yellowed paper along the table in front of Wolf. Wolf frowned, screwing his eyes up.
‘Can’t you read it out to me I’ve got a fucker of a headache.’ Wolf had been drinking most of the afternoon, and had ended up half dozing on one of the beer tables outside of the pub; his shaven head was a vicious shade of pink, the wolf skin, now by his side on the bench, had afforded some protection, but the late afternoon had proved too hot to wear it and Wolf had been too drunk to care.
‘Where the fook’s Ananda?’ he asked, scratching his stubbled cheeks. Con shrugged and sipped his beer while a fly lazily danced about Wolf’s half empty lager.
‘Go on, sorry mate. I shouldn’t have dropped off I feel like cack now. What is it?’
‘It’s one of Tolkien’s letters, the ones Shen had’ said Con, who felt odd reading aloud in this public place.
‘My dear Edith…’ he began…
My Dear Edith,
My apologies for the delay in writing; indeed, I have yet to send your first letter and so it seems you shall receive these two together….
‘Right,’ Con continued, deciding to paraphrase instead of reading the letter verbatim, ‘he’s saying they were delayed as Jack, that’s C S Lewis, was unwell – but they’ve got a lift to Glastonbury off a woman named Penry-Evans and her husband – and that they’ll be heading there in the morning as the woman’s staying at the Manor now… right…here we are, listen to this…’
Wolf was listening, albeit with his face hanging over his arm which was laid flat on the table, his eyes half open, but aware.
‘What has struck me as important is that this place, unbeknown to me before now, is the obvious original location of the myth of Merlin…’
Wolf’s puffy eyes opened a fraction more at the mention of the enchanter.
‘…Merlin was responsible for both the building of Stonehenge and for uttering prophecies on finding the fighting dragons beneath the hill of Dinas Emrys in Snowdonia – but I am now of the opinion that both tales refer to neither of these locations but Avebury – my proof? None really save my usual linguistic follies – but Dinas Emrys and Amesbury, the location of Stonehenge, both mean ‘city or fort of Emrys’ Emrys being an old name for Merlin. Now, Geoffrey of Monmouth says that Stonehenge was built near Mons Ambrius, but there is no such hill at Stonehenge, which is set upon a level plain, and so it seems probable, given that the names Amesbury and Avebury are the same, both stemming from an early form of Emrys, that Mons Ambrius is Silbury. If it is not Silbury it may be the similar hill near Marlborough because Marlborough is the hill of Merlin – Merlin’s barrow. Surely Marlborough is Mons Ambrius, the hill of Emrys: Geoffrey of Monmouth may have known the tale referred to a stone circle in Wessex and chose the wrong one. The Merlin myth is based here, Edith. Initially I thought that this is why at Dinas Emrys he sees the vision of the fighting dragons, for as Stukeley pointed out Avebury resembles, to some extent, a giant serpent. But I’m not swayed by this; more indicative of the myth being set here is the font – with its two wyverns between a central figure. The font is early, probably contemporary with Geoffrey of Monmouth, and suggests the legend was known and associated with this place.
In the Merlin story the fighting dragons represent the Saxons and the Welsh – the legend seems to tell of a conflict, but I do not have the knowledge to understand what this particular part means. I am racking my brains to think if I can find anything more about this Emrys. Mr Penry-Evans has said that welsh myth records that Dinas Emrys was the site where Emrys was buried so perhaps in the original myth Merlin was sacrificed – and where might he be? Under the stones, no doubt, as a foundation sacrifice…’
‘Hmm. Go on’
‘That letter ends there, it wasn’t finished. The rest is in notes. Don’t you see what he’s saying?’ Con beamed, excitedly.
‘Useful. Fuck this isn’t helping my head, Con. Just give it to me in layman’s terms, I can’t work anything out at the moment.’
‘Okay – I’ll put it in terms a Yorkshireman will understand: the myth of Merlin, well, part of it – it’s based on this place.’
‘Yeah, I got that. That’s cool.’ If he really thought it was cool, he didn’t show it; he yawned and belched.
‘Remember yesterday in West Kennet? When Ananda was talking about foundation sacrifices and shit – you know, the giant Ymir whose sacrifice forms the world?’
Wolf nodded almost imperceptibly.
‘Hang on.’ Con said. He disappeared inside and re-emerged with a pint for himself and a coke and a packet of crisps for Wolf, who immediately set about stuffing his face and rehydrating.
‘You’re a fookin’ legend, man. Go on… I was listening…’
‘’Right… we mentioned that Old Man may have been some kind of Ymir, enacting the creation, yeah? Well the Merlin legend is all about foundation sacrifices, killing the youth so the stones will stay in place – it’s basically a folkloric retelling of the creation… from Ymir’s flesh the earth was made, whatever the line is… well, from Merlin’s flesh the stones, the henge, is made – in the form of the cosmos. And it’s set here – this is Merlin’s circle… listen…’
Con was excitedly flicking through the pages of notes, searching, while Wolf rolled a cigarette for himself and Con.
Con took the cigarette, and with it hanging from his mouth began to read from Tolkien’s hurried notes:
‘The wyverns: separated, like Marduk and Tiamat – The Mesopotamian god Marduk separates the serpentine primal gods, Apsu and Tiamat, and from them creates the world; sets Tiamat, salt-water, above as the Milky Way; Apsu, below as fresh water; the figure on the font with the crozier? Creation equals flood; Eärendil as the star presaging the flood; how did I stumble on this? What if the flood was in the heavens?”
‘Woah, woah…what?’ Wolf asked, his face scrunched up in confusion.
‘Umm…what bit?’
‘Murdoch or whatever.’
‘Marduk – it’s the Mesopotamian creation story, Marduk splits the two primal gods apart, and forms the world from them – they’re these monstrous kind of dragons, but he separates them, and they become the sky above and the abyss below. They’re like the earth and sky separated by the sun at the moment of sunrise from primeval night. Tolkien equated them with the dragons on the font in the Church.’
Wolf still looked bemused. ‘And that last bit – the star and flood?’
‘Eärendil – he’s one of Tolkien’s heroes in The Silmarillion;’ Con said, speaking not from the notes but from his own memory of reading the tales as a teenager; ‘he is seen as a sign in the heavens as hope for men after the flood destroys Numenor and Beleriand –.’
‘Forget all the Middle Earth shit for a minute…‘ Wolf said; ‘…go back to the Merlin stuff.’
‘Well,’ Con said, thumbing the notes again; ‘
”The Flood presaged by the appearance of the star – just as Petrie noted in Egypt, where Sirius presages the flooding of the Nile; might the rising of a star act as a precursor for a flood here at Avebury – but then how? How might one mark a flood in stone? How might Merlin have recorded this?”
‘then, bear with me…the writing gets even worse here - ah, here we go:
“Merlin: Emrys: What if Patriarch Petrie was right? I saw it clearly tonight at the Manor; despite his pomposity he is, at least, a font of knowledge. Marduk and Tiamat are linked to Nut. Obvious now I think about it; and the symbolism matches perfectly!!!”’
‘Nut?’ Wolf asked.
Con nodded, and tried to find the passage he’d seen earlier, that had shocked him awake.
‘The Egyptian sky Goddess Nut – here we go:
“Geb and Nut, divided at the start of time, like Apsu and Tiamat, one (Geb) falls to (become) the earth, the other, Nut, the sky…might Emrys fit this pattern – falling (becoming) stone and earth…?”
this bit’s a bit hard to read, as the handwriting goes a bit shit, but listen:
“The earth, foundation, and, like Geb and Nut a twin… like Ymir, Merlin - Emrys is a twin. Ymir’s-bury. But where, then, is his twin? Is she in the sky?”
‘Fuck me, Wolf – Merlin was a twin! Like me and Mel!’
Wolf looked at Con as if he was stupid.
‘Yep, I know. Like Ymir. I thought you’d have known that.’ Wolf said matter-of-factly, and with a slight smile that showed he was enjoying the fact he knew more than Con.
Ymir, Twin – yes, he’d come across that in his PhD studies… all these twins in Indo-European myths, representing the creation of duality from unity, or so he’d read, one being creates the dualistic world of opposites… but these were all male – all stemming from a proto-form ‘*Yemo’, from which the word Gemini originated, as well as Ymir. But Emrys? He’d never seen Merlin touted as one of their kind. Was it just a linguistic link or was there more to it? And why did Tolkien suggest his twin was female? Because Tiamat and Nut were female? Surely, he knew that the northern Twins were male. What was Con missing? He suddenly wished so hard he could just ring Mel and ask her. She would have known; Celtic was her thing. Con had never really read the books she carried around, relying on her readings and recitations of poetry. Had Graves mention Merlin was a twin? If he had Con didn’t remember; if Mel had read it, she would have mentioned it, wouldn’t she? If not in Graves, then where? And why was it suddenly vitally important that he should know?
‘Where’s it written?’ he asked Wolf.
Wolf chuckled, picking up his phone, and signalled Con to be quiet; after a few moments he began to speak to the person on the other end; ‘Hey… yeah…. well, no, actually – feel like a pig’s shat in my head. You in the van? Yeah, can you get me an ibuprofen from the glove box? No – actually, sod it, I’m going to come back and kip – see ya….
‘I’m sorry Con,’ he said, putting down the phone, ‘I can’t concentrate, I’m going to have a snooze.’
‘What about Merlin and the twin thing?’ Con asked again.
‘Ask me later, Professor…patience is a virtue, you know.’ Wolf said, waving him off. Con started to speak again but held his tongue, despite his mind burning with unasked questions.
He thought of Old Man in his glass prison, just a short walk away from where they sat – a man who yesterday they had argued may have been enacting the myth of Ymir, Twin, a creative sacrifice, and here was Tolkien arguing that Merlin may have been playing the same role. Merlin and his twin…but who was she, if indeed she was a she? He had a sudden memory of his conversation with Mel all those years before - the whole 60s goddess movement – Graves, Gimbutas, the works – it’s all based on a phoney premise – there’s no evidence for some Great Goddess. It’s feminist propaganda… and her response that her eradication had been the result of male-dominated societies; his own work had begun to suggest she had been correct; these ancient sites had seemingly been aligned on a sky identified in the past as a celestial goddess, and now Tolkien was suggesting something similar… where is his twin, is she in the sky? That was the question; and what’s more, where was she in myth? Had we in the west only been given half the story of our past, he wondered? Like being told of Adam but not Eve…
Wolf downed his coke and stood.
‘Where are you parked?’ Con asked.
‘Oh, down outside Shen’s. You coming down?’
Con nodded and finished his pint. ‘Will Hayden be there?’ he asked.
‘How the fuck should I know? I think he was working today, probably won’t be back.’ Despite his apparent bad mood Wolf managed a grin.
‘Why don’t you just tell her you like her?’
‘It’s not as easy as that. I feel bad.’ Con answered.
‘Bad? Because of Hayden? Look, mate – he’s a charmer, but underneath he’s a bit ordinary really – I don’t think they’re well suited; she needs more, I think.’
‘You think I can give her more?’ Con asked.
‘Honestly? Not at the moment.’
Con felt as if he had been stung.
‘Why?’
‘Because you’re still dealing with all that shit. You can’t really look after yourself, mate - how you gonna look after her? At least Hayden’s managing that. He can support her; she just needs someone with a bit more imagination; you have that, but you have no fire in your belly.’
As Wolf said these words Con felt a flash of anger. I do have fire, it’s just been a glowing coal hidden by cinders, he thought.
‘Look, I can see you’re fuming but you’re just locked inside. Get angry – let it out or it’s gonna chew you up and destroy you. Get some balls – I don’t know, get pissed, do some mushrooms, get in a fight – go and try to fuck someone – just not Shen; you’re not ready for her.’
Con’s heart was drumming and he felt as if he were blinkered, looking down through a tunnel.
‘I can’t – I’m stuck, I just keep thinking the same things over and over – I can’t escape from my thoughts… how can I do that? It’s more complicated than you know! You don’t see it all. I think I fucking love her but it’s ruined’ he blurted out.
‘Then tell me what I don’t know.’
‘I can’t - I’ve not told anyone; it just keeps going round in my head; I just can’t stop thinking about it.’
‘Just don’t think – act! And don’t ask yourself how as that’s just fucking thinking again!’
They had reached the edge of Church Street and Hayden’s bike was parked outside Church Cottage.
‘For fuck’s sake why can’t he just fuck off?’ Con spat and turned on his heels.
‘Where are you going now?’ asked Wolf.
‘Back to my van’ he shouted over his shoulder.
‘Ok – whatever you need to do – come along to the pub tonight, though – it’s my last night here. I’ll tell you about Merlin…maybe.’
Con raised a hand in acknowledgement, his middle finger extended.
He had only walked a few metres on when he almost walked into Hayden, who was exiting the post office with a loaf of bread and some milk.
The two men looked at each other and halted; Con would have walked by with a nod but he felt somehow he should stop. Hayden didn’t look overly enthused by the encounter either.
‘What’s up?’ Hayden said, removing one of his earphones. ‘I heard the chairman didn’t hand back the bones.’
Con shook his head, smiling at Hayden’s understatement.
‘No. Wolf said his bit but I don’t think there’s much more that can be done really.’ He shifted around awkwardly.
‘Anyway…’ Hayden said, motioning to leave, and starting to put his earphones back in ‘can’t keep She Who Must Be Obeyed waiting… probably catch you in the pub later, mate.’ And he raised his hand in a half-wave and set off towards Church Cottage. Con turned and watched him go.
Fuuuuuck! Con felt he wanted to scream – and it wasn’t all to do with Hayden and Shen; it was the whole Merlin thing that Tolkien’s letter had sparked in his brain. Twin? Why a twin?! And who was the other – the lost twin? He felt a horrible sense of becoming hemmed in, of the world twisting and becoming smaller, of disparate themes becoming enmeshed and tangled, closing him in… a tightening net or web of ideas and coincidences, connections and images – bordering on magical thinking, a feeling it was all linked – him, Shen, Mel, Tolkien, Merlin, the Old Man in the museum… the stones themselves somehow linked to the stars and a flood – the flood of the milky river in the heavens presaged by the rising of the stars; a sister, a lost sister, the forgotten twin – but not by me, he thought. And he picked up speed and began to run through the circle towards the Avenue, the circle and its many tourists becoming a blur, the fire in his head a burning madness he could not outrun, a converging point of echoes from before and after, from outside and inside time, spiralling inwards towards, towards, towards…what?
Chapter 37 The Manor
The bells of the nearby church chimed for eight o’clock at the exact moment Lewis rang the bell on the large wooden door of the Manor.
‘Impeccable timing, gentlemen’ Lewis beamed. There was a noise in the hallway the door was opened by a tall, thin man in a dark suit.
They were beckoned into the hall, but as the night had a slight chill they kept their jackets on and were lead into the library on the side of the house overlooking the gardens. The library was spacious, and new – dating from the start of the century, unlike the rest of the house which was Tudor.
Keiller had only been in the house just over a year but already the place was stacked with his belongings. The library was full to overflowing with leather-bound volumes, and here and there small pieces of interest lay on cupboards and tables: small Egyptian artefacts, flints, a prehistoric bronze axe.
Keiller had been sitting in a leather wing backed chair beside the fireplace, looking out over the garden where the moon was grazing the top of the fir-tree hedge. As his guests entered he turned and rose with a genuine smile, putting down the tumbler of whiskey he was holding and approaching each man with a hand-shake.
‘So good of you to come; one tires a little of the same company – archaeologists are a rather single minded lot and the conversation over dinner can be a little… predictable.’ He smoothed back his short grey-flecked hair and asked if the friends would like a sherry, or something stronger?
The butler returned with three glasses of whiskey.
‘Thank you Frazer’ he said. Frazer nodded and left.
‘While we’re waiting for our other guests, I’ll show you the house,’ Keiller said. He gestured for them to precede him into a room leading off the library: a room stocked with utilitarian cabinets looking almost medical in their spartan nature; angled wooden worktops were laid over some, and a large table at the centre also in the same dark wood.
‘The map room’ Keiller declared, walking over to a half-finished map on the drawing board closest to the window. He beckoned the men over.
‘Here you can see the north-west sector; here’s the trees we have cleared so far… and if you look here’ he lifted the map to expose another beneath full of other markings, ‘you’ll see what a job we’ve had to clear the site of trees. We started in early March so you see what you’ve been seeing is very much the tail end of the clean-up process.
‘This stone here is the one we’re raising at the moment – it was only buried under a couple of feet of soil; but you can see from the space here that we’ve not even begun to survey the rest of this sector yet. The lifting of this stone was very much a showpiece for both press and our eminent guest Sir Flinders Petrie.’
Keiller scowled momentarily and was about to go on but Lewis interrupted him.
‘How long is it going to take you to finish the circle?’ he asked.
‘Twelve years we think – that’s what we have budgeted for anyway. This season we’ll be dealing just with this sector – but there is so much more to do, and I don’t just mean digging and reconstruction; there’s cataloguing and publishing the finds; we have, of course, to find a permanent location for the museum...’
Just then the doorbell rang.
‘Ah, good… more guests – shall we?’ Keiller said, gesturing out of the map room.
They soon found themselves once more in the library; Tom and Violet Penry-Evans stood sipping their sherry looking over Keiller’s vast collection of books. Tolkien was looking with curiosity at a reconstructed clay vessel with a narrow waist and a wide mouth, like a small vase, but incised with regular bars of pattern.
‘Ah. Yes, this was found beside one of the stones in the avenue. It’s what we call a beaker, probably dates to 2000 BC. The beaker culture were the people who brought in metalwork from the continent: bronze wielding invaders with long skulls, riding horses, we think.’
Tolkien held the cup carefully. Had one of his horse lords from under the round mounds by the sanctuary once drunk from such a cup?
‘Before this,’ Keiller was saying ‘we find this type of pottery on site – Grimston-Lyles we call it, heavier, cruder perhaps, but with lozenge and spiral patterns – most entrancing…’ but was interrupted as the doorbell rang again. Frazer left his standing position at the side of the door and disappeared out of sight.
‘Who else is invited, I wonder?’ Barfield whispered to Tolkien. It was with a mixture of pleasant surprise and worry that the new guests were seen to enter.
First came the young archaeologist Piggott, smiling widely. Behind him, first revealed by a gruff voice in the hallway, was Petrie and with him the woman who had been at his side earlier that day at the stones.
‘Full house! Splendid!’ laughed Keiller. ‘Dinner will begin at half past eight.’ Tolkien glanced at his pocket watch: quarter past.
Until dinner was called Keiller worked the room, spending the majority of the time showing his Egyptian antiques to Petrie and his companion, who had been introduced as Margaret Murray.
‘My word,’ Lewis had said to Tolkien. ‘That’s THE Margaret Murray; an Egyptologist of some repute, recently retired, I believe from the University of London – but she wrote a book on witchcraft which I read and must say found rather hard to swallow.’
Tolkien glanced over at her; she had a long, kind face, her heavy eyelids and downward sloping eyebrows made her look sympathetic. She certainly seemed to be having a positive effect on the usually dour Petrie, who was laughing, his beard wagging.
Lewis chuckled, turning conspiratorially towards his two fellows.
‘This is marvellous; we have a pan-worshipping host, a guest who writes about witches and another who is an occultist who believes she once escaped from Atlantis. I foresee stormy waters ahead before the soup course is finished.’
***
Lewis was wrong; the cream of mushroom soup had been ladled from the terrine, eaten and the plates removed without so much a fractious word being spoken by any of the guests. But that was about to change.
The three friends had grown used to fine dining at Oxford, though Barfield found it more nostalgic, enjoying it far less often than he had; only Tom and Violet Penry-Evans seemed awkward. They had been placed beside each other facing the window of the large Georgian-style dining room, opposite Petrie, Miss Murray and Barfield; Tolkien sat beside Violet, opposite Barfield, while at the ends of the table sat Lewis, between Tolkien and Barfield, and Keiller and Piggot, rather tightly packed between Tom Penry-Evans and Flinders Petrie.
Frazer stood near the door, beside a polished wooden cabinet bearing a selection of bottles, walking to the table to refill the guests’ wineglasses when necessary.
They had talked so far about the excavation and of the state of British prehistory in general. Tolkien had eaten in silence, red faced when Petrie had begun again to mention the superiority of certain races of men, and the paucity of North-west European civilization compared with, say, Egypt. He had tried to steer the conversation away from such subjects and towards myth, wishing to question the assembled experts on certain aspects of creation myths.
‘It’s the symbolism of twins which fascinates me,’ Tolkien said, ‘in relation to creation legends. You mentioned the sky goddess Nut or Hathor yesterday, Sir, and I seem to recall from my reading that this goddess is a twin?’
‘Indeed, she is the sister of the earth-god Geb, who is serpent-headed, and depicted as falling from her embrace; he becomes the earth and she the sky.’
‘This particular Creation myth,’ Murray added; ‘the Heliopolitan myth, has a number of brother/sister pairings; each generation arises from the former, like a flower opening, having first risen from Atum.’
‘It’s just I was thinking of the symbolism of the creation in other Near Eastern myths, such as the separation of Apsu and Tiamat by the sun-god Marduk – the imagery seems linked.’ Tolkien explained.
Petrie leaned forward, slowly nodding – ‘A staple image from the ancient world, and no stranger to our own modern ears: “And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.” Genesis 1:7.’
Lewis eyed Tolkien, wondering what exactly lay behind his questions, but Tolkien gave nothing away.
‘Does one find many such correspondences between Biblical and Egyptian myth?’ Tolkien asked; ‘…such as the Flood?’.
Petrie considered while sipping his wine.
‘The Nile flood, of course, dominates Egyptian tradition, but that is strictly seasonal. As for a sea-flood, the only reference I am aware of, and one cannot escape the possibility of higher, Classical influence, is the building texts at Edfu… These texts purport to tell the story of the Primeval Ones who predated the Egyptians, who inhabited an Island of the Gods, but which was tragically engulfed by the sea forcing the Primeval Ones to come to Egypt bringing their knowledge with them and establishing the original temple, long destroyed and rebuilt, at Edfu.’
‘And Classical influence is likely, because…?’
‘Because of the date of the temple – it is Ptolemaic – Hellenistic – in date, increasing the possibility of influence from, say, Plato’s Timaeus. Had the myth been found elsewhere in Egypt, at an earlier site, we might give more credence to it as an Egyptian myth...’
Tolkien merely nodded, reasoning, silently, that Petrie would never easily have credited such a myth to an aboriginal civilization… of course he’d rather see it as an import from a ‘higher’ cultures…yet his answer had fuelled Tolkien’s thinking – here, too, a flood – but is it history or myth?
Presuming, rightly, given Tolkien’s questions, that the assembled guests would be interested in their work, Petrie and Murray continued to speak at length of the many excavations they had headed in Egypt, such as the labyrinth at Neqada that the Romans had reduced to dust.
‘Such sites get little recognition amongst the public, I am afraid, who are more interested in that second-rate tomb of Tutankhamun and ridiculous ideas of the mummy’s curse than in real archaeology.’
‘So, what do you think of the curse?’ asked Violet.
‘It is pure bunkum. I am surprised you had to ask. You think I’m the sort to give credence to such beliefs?’ he said.
‘Not at all;’ she replied, with a slight smile. ‘But the ancient Egyptians certainly believed in magic.’
‘Many ancient civilizations laboured under the delusion of superstition; it does not mean that we should.’
‘So, you admit your highly advanced Egyptians were superstitious? Does that not make them un-civilized, and if not, how do you tally their belief in magic with their supposedly high level of culture?’ It was clear to all assembled that Mrs Penry-Evans was baiting this bear of a man.
Petrie grimaced. ‘There belief in magic is, one must admit, a hangover from a more primitive time, but that does not negate the splendour and complexity of their art or architecture, for instance.’
‘Well, let us not immediately dismiss their beliefs.’ Violet said. ‘We cannot say for sure whether some human faculties, such as psychic abilities, may have atrophied over time, so their disappearance could be due to other factors than having ‘outgrown’ them in the sense of, say, outgrowing childish behaviour. You merely dismiss them as uncivilized because our modern western civilization, in its narrow-minded hubris, assumes it to be so simply because we no longer possess them; I believe the phrase is ‘sour grapes’. Perhaps an Egyptian curse might be effective today – even more so when acting upon us moderns who lack the appropriate knowledge of psychic self-defence.’
‘Psychic self-defence? My word. What absolute poppycock!’ He glared at Keiller, as if holding him solely responsible for his guests’ ridiculous questions.
Tolkien looked across at Barfield who was clearing his throat; he had the advantage of being on the same side of the table as Petrie and so was able to address his point to Violet Penry-Evans.
‘You have a very good point there Mrs Penry-Evans,’ he began. ‘We have a very narrow view of what our ancestors may or may not have experienced. We read The Iliad and interpret the appearances of the gods as poetic metaphors, or we read of the sightings of fauns or elves and take them as whimsy – but the sources from which we take these instances do not suggest anything but they are reporting actual experiences. Perhaps man’s consciousness was different, closer to that of the animals, perhaps in a semi-mystical state, more open to spiritual realities; a state we might well describe today as magical?’
‘Hear, hear!’ said Tom Penry-Evans in his sing song accent. ‘Exactly right, my man. When my Celtic ancestors talked of the fairy-folk they weren’t some Victorian winged fancy but beings of great power, and sometimes great size; the tales talk of interactions between them and mankind; are we right to dismiss this as fiction just because the majority of us are no longer as able to experience such events?’
Petrie was shaking his head. ‘Of course, we are right to dismiss them! Where is the evidence, the one shred of evidence that man once truly knew or experienced magic as a reality? Huh?’ he looked around the table and was just about to grunt as if to say ‘exactly’ when a voice challenged him.
‘Language.’
‘Eh, what was that?’ Petrie asked, cupping his hand to his ear.
‘Language’ Tolkien repeated.
‘Pray, go on…’ Petrie said, smugly.
‘The study of language,’ Tolkien stuttered, aware of all eyes on him, ‘reveals that from the earliest times it dealt not in abstractions but in such a way as to suggest the world it described was thought of as somehow more poetic and mystical than we now credit. It reveals our ancestors conceived of a world where everything was connected – magically connected, but that in time we have become severed from that older state of awareness and find ourselves alone in the world, cut off from nature.’
‘Give me an example. And for god’s sake speak more clearly’
It was Barfield who answered. ‘If I may, Tollers? The Latin word Pneuma: it means both spirit and breath and wind; one can posit a time when the speaker of that word did not have to identify which particular meaning he was referring to, as they were all one and the same; in other words, his world was connected, mystical – the very breath in his body was the spirit that animated him; the wind was the breath of God. Or the word Cereal which contains the name Ceres, harking back to a time when the wheat itself was the body of a god, orient and immortal’ he winked at Tolkien.
Petrie was shaking his head again. ‘Language proves nothing; just because old words had several meanings does not prove magic ever existed – or that man ever perceived the universe as different as we see it today.’
‘I’m afraid you’re mistaken. It does exactly that. How we perceive the world is directly based on our language,’ Barfield continued.
‘There is a world of difference between, say, ‘a tree’ and ‘a dryad’: one seems to be a label, dismissive, the other gives soul to the object, and who is to say that is wrong? Just the use of that word adds an extra dimension, and who are we to say it is not a true perception? Its reductionist to say we give it a soul by using such words – surely, we take away its soul when we fail to use the word.
‘And as our language today is fragmented, so is our view of the world. This is why we need to use metaphor to express spiritual or mystical concepts – we’re having to use it to reconstruct what was once inherent in the first words uttered by mankind, but which are now corrupt, fallen. The Egyptian mind with its hieroglyphic writing suggests a very different mind-set and worldview than ours – not just an interpretation of the world, mind you, but an experience of it! Coleridge talks of imagination as the basis of perception; for it is imagination – the image-creating faculty – that defines what we see. The Ancient Egyptians literally saw a different world from you or I. Theirs was a world of dryads, not trees, where the growing corn was Osiris and the flooding of the Nile a divine, rather than a physical, event.’
Petrie had suffered this paean to words as nobly as such a man could; hands folded in front of him, waiting patiently for a chance to brush aside the folly being spoken.
‘My dear sir, you are, I recall from our introductions, a solicitor, no? And we two…’ he gestured towards himself and Margaret Murray, ‘are amongst the most eminent Egyptologists in the world today. I rather think we may know a little more about the Egyptians than you.’ The edge of his mouth curved up in a crisp expression of superiority.
Lewis put down his wine glass.
‘My dear sir, these two…’ he said, gesturing to Tolkien and Barfield ‘are two of the most eminent linguists in the world today. I rather think they know a little bit more about language than you.’
Keiller let out a peal of laughter of the same volume and glee as the one he had let out the day before when the fragment of wood had crowned Piggott, and clapped his hands.
‘Bravo!’ he said. ‘Bravo! Touché, my good man!’ evidently he was beginning to become drunk, and less worried about appeasing the Olympian Petrie.
Tolkien was amused to see the austere butler Frazer also betray a smile, though he was quick to turn to the dresser and begin polishing the silverware in an attempt at distraction.
At that moment the door opened, and two maids entered bearing large serving plates of vegetables and slices of meat.
‘From our own garden.’ Keiller remarked; so, this was George’s handiwork, Tolkien thought, helping himself to a modest portion of vegetables.
With usual British politeness the meat was served, and more wine poured. Piggott, drinking water, remarked on the quality of the food, and all agreed with polite noises of approval.
Pleasantries were exchanged between the guests during this lull in combat; but before the main course was ended Violet had turned to Keiller with a smile and asked him about his interest in witchcraft.
‘Ah, how observant of you! Yes, I do have a keen interest as you picked up from my library; I am lucky enough to have in my possession a great number of the best books on the subject – some dating back to as early as 1452; I have, however, of late had to curtail my researches given my absorption in prehistoric archaeology!’
‘I would be most interested in having a better look later, if that wouldn’t be a problem.’ She said.
‘By all means, by all means! And your own interest?’ he asked, wiping his mouth with a napkin
She looked about her. ‘I am very interested in the occult – and in the practice of...magic.’ she looked at Petrie when she said the latter, relishing the word.
‘Splendid!; laughed Keiller, red-faced from the whiskey and wine, and looking directly at Mrs Murray.
Mrs Murray regarded him with a look that betrayed neither contempt or acceptance; she just looked at him then shifted her gaze to Violet Penry-Evans and then back to Keiller. Her drooping eyes sparkled as she spoke.
‘Of course the study of witchcraft does lead on to the study of ancient religions and therefore ancient sites, by consequence, Mr Keiller. The subjects are linked.’ She said.
Keiller shrugged. ‘I suppose that depends whether one believes witchcraft to be a derivative of such ancient cults.’ He said matter-of-factly.
‘Which I do, as you know.’ Mrs Murray said. He bowed his head in affirmation.
‘I regret to say,’ Keiller said ‘that I have not had the time to study your latest volume with as much rigour as I had hoped.’
‘So you have written on witchcraft?’ Tom Penry-Evans asked.
‘I have.’ She replied. ‘And as Mr Keiller rightly says my theory is that witchcraft was part of a pagan fertility cult that persisted into Christian times.’
‘Under the eye of the Church?’ Lewis, from the end of the table opposite Keiller, asked. ‘I find that hard to believe.’ His own glass had been emptied and filled nearly as much as Keiller’s, and the high colour in his cheeks was no longer due to fever.
‘Oh yes; under the eye, and even with the blessing of, the church in some cases.’ She said.
Lewis pulled a face. ‘Pagan elements, yes, I can believe that – look at all the green man images you find in medieval stonemasonry; but a still-practising pagan cult I’m afraid is very unlikely. What would you say, Mrs Penry-Evans?’
Violet thought for a while before answering. ‘I see no reason, like yourself, why elements may have survived; in the case of witchcraft we are looking not at survivals of pagan religion per se but of age old magical practises, some of which might have been passed down for generations without them being thought of as necessarily pagan.’
‘Like the Acerbot…’ Tolkien suggested; ‘it means ‘acre-remedy’, it’s a late Anglo-Saxon charm that calls for a number of prayers and Christian symbols, but the whole process is magical and pagan to the core, a fact that was probably lost on those who enacted it, who would probably have been horrified to think they were taking part in some pagan rite.’ He suddenly chuckled to himself remembering Owen’s description of the quartz stones, the cloch geala, that Mrs Mac Govan-Crow had boiled in the water she had given to Jack to soothe his throat.
‘Are you a pagan, Mrs Penry-Evans?’ Lewis asked.
‘I consider myself a believer in Christ but do not deny the older gods their due.’
Tolkien glanced up at Barfield and raised his brows. Quite how does one balance such beliefs, he wondered to himself. To believe in Christ is, surely, to deny the older gods. Still, I cannot deny the attraction these older gods might have, though by that I mean an aesthetic attraction, a literary one…
He may have been preparing to speak but Mrs Murray had started to address Mrs Penry-Evans.
‘I think it is a mistake to look at witchcraft as a magical tradition; it was religious, through and through – a religion based on the worship of a nature god, like Pan, one whose details can be gleaned by a careful reading of witchcraft trials; again and again we see the coven of 13, the leader of which is no spirit or god but a flesh and blood man – the leader of the coven, whose horns and cloven feet are but ritual costumes of a pagan priest.’
‘A god like Pan?’ Lewis asked.
‘Yes; although to the Celts he was Cernunnos, whom we see depicted on the famous Gundestrup cauldron with the antlers of a deer, stood beside a wolf and a deer, and serpents in his hands.’
‘The master of animals…’ Lewis said.
‘Myrddin Wyllt’ Mrs Penry-Evans agreed, her eyes flicking to the side to meet Tolkien’s.
‘A careful reading indeed, Ms Murray.’ Keiller said. ‘But erroneous. I point you, with all due modesty, to my publication of 1922: ‘The Personnel of Aberdeenshire Witchcraft Covens in the Years 1596-7…’
Lewis, Barfield and Tolkien exchanged surprised glances – Keiller was a dark horse; the man, as George had rightly said, was clearly a scholar.
‘…in which I cover the same sources as your book ‘The Witch cult in Western Europe’ but reach, shall we say, different conclusions; the majority of women accused of witchcraft during that period were solitary individuals – the number 13 is hardly present; and what’s more their accounts of visitations by supernatural beings cannot just be explained away by costumed priests. These are either the visions of madness, that is delusions of a sick mind, or hallucinations, or else fictions foisted upon these poor women, or forced out of them by torture at the hands of their accusers.’
Keiller’s usual boyish animation had become a steely and controlled delivery of opinion.
‘I just do not find a shred of evidence that such a demonic being was worshipped by these poor witches; these people lived in real fear of Hell – to them such worship would be anathema; we can’t make the mistake of foisting our modern concepts of such acts on the past; oh I’ve been known to wind ivy round my head and pour wine at the foot of the statue of Pan in the garden here – but it’s all play; For myself, in this age of reason the god Pan, I would say, represents something natural and capricious in our character – and can be seen as an embodiment of Nature, as something to celebrate not repress; I risk nothing by doing it, as I have little in the way of Faith; but these people would have believed that by so acting they were risking their eternal souls.’
‘Perhaps these are all the old Gods were and are, Mr Keiller.’ Mrs Penry-Evans said, ‘something close to nature within our own souls that we can allow to open up to and celebrate – a celebration of our unity with the living world. But even so, these images are living realities; Pan is very real; be careful lest you wake something you cannot then control.’
Keiller laughed. ‘I appreciate your warning; drunken play is all it is, I have no more sinister intentions. At heart I’m a traditionalist and besides, as I grow older, I find my youthful follies less and less attractive. It is hard when one has enough money to not worry about a single thing; I see myself as saved by archaeology – I have a passion now that I can share, and the money to guarantee beautiful places like Avebury are not lost to future generations. I feel worthy, now, not some rich playboy with no aims or goals.’
Mrs Murray had kept quiet during this exchange, though she had glowered for a while at Keiller’s dismissal of her ideas; he was an amateur, a rich kid with too much time on his hands; if he had studied the subject as she had, spent his life in academia, he might be less reactionary and better able to judge the value of her work. She was not about to lose her temper with a jumped-up son of a marmalade-maker. Places such as Avebury had once thronged with people proclaiming the life and sacrificial death of the divine king; and if she was right, such a ritual had continued to be enacted throughout so-called Christian history under the very nose of organised religion. Madwomen having visions – how did that explain the similarities between the accounts of witches from all over Europe? This had to be a cult that had continued in secret; it couldn’t just be coincidence; what other option was there? Not Mrs Penry-Evans’ theory, that was certain; to argue that that the many similarities in the Witch trials occurred because they were drawing on the same magical realities, the same invisible gods and spirits - Heaven’s above! To even begin to entertain such a thought would be to undo the progress of hundreds of years of critical thinking!
Two events in quick succession brought the meal to a premature close. Petrie had remained relatively silent and glowering after Keiller’s outburst of laughter; but now his plate was cleared he turned to his host and announced he had an early train to catch back to London the next day and called on Frazer to fetch his overcoat. Mrs Murray, evidently, was also about to leave, as she called out after Frazer with the same request. The guests around the table stood to say their goodbyes to the departing pair; but before she left Mrs Murray turned to Mrs Penry-Evans and said that given the latter’s interest in witchcraft she could do no better than to write to her secretary and have copies of her two books on the subject sent to her, gratis.
Mrs Penry-Evans smiled warmly, aware the gesture was meant as much for Keiller’s ears as her own, and was an attempt to help guide these poor misguided individuals back into the truth as she saw it.
‘Thank you, I certainly shall. And by way of thanks I shall send you in return two of my books.’
‘I didn’t realise you were a writer’ Mrs Murray said, surprised.
‘I go under the pen name Dion Fortune; I will send a copy of my novel, The Goat-foot God and a non-fiction work on the Mystical Qabalah.’ She beamed.
Keiller snorted at the look on Mrs Murray’s face as she responded with a polite thank you, her eyes wide in what he took to be some kind of horror.
Barfield’s eyes were no less wide.
‘Deo non Fortuna!’ he said, laughing. ‘Of course!’
‘I shall see you to the door.’ Keiller shouted after the two departing guests.
‘We shall see ourselves out!’ came the gruff reply.
Keiller looked back towards the remaining guests, twisting on the spot as if trying to decide whether out of politeness he should ignore Petrie’s remark and show them out anyway; but evidently something inside him realised the pointlessness of buttering up the old man any further and he stood where he was and laughed heartily.
‘Well I think that went swimmingly, wouldn’t you agree?!’ he said.
And at that very moment Piggott who had been sipping water rather too frequently slid to the floor in a dead faint.
‘Frazer!’ Keiller called out. ‘Smelling salts! Man down!’
‘Is he okay?’ Mrs Penry-Evans asked, walking to where Barfield and Lewis now crouched propping up the prone waxy figure.
‘I’m okay,’ Piggott mumbled; ‘Would someone mind awfully helping me back to the Red Lion? It’s devilishly hot in here.’
Chapter 38 And the Meek...
By the time Con had reached his camper beside the avenue his anger with Wolf had faded to a morose self-pity. It was obvious that he had little chance with Shen - not only because of the charisma and bearing of Hayden, but also because of Con’s own inability to get over the events of the previous year. And why should I? I lost my sister. One does not simply walk away from that. He remembered the weeks following Melissa’s death – how he felt he was walking in a different world, a horrid dream-world that he begged some higher power to wake him from; how different things would be if she was still here – he would have his sister, and maybe he would have Shen. Fate had denied him both. Fate was a cruel power. The universe sucked; it was a horrible mistake that should never have happened. He cursed whatever had caused that original static nothing to open into this nightmare of forms, where every good thing was shadowed by bad. His sister’s soul was with the demons – not free as it should be.
The camper was sweltering; he opened the side door and the windows; the sun was at least on its downward path so the day would not be long to cool, he reasoned. He opened a cupboard and fished around for something to eat; a pack of noodles fell to the floor and he took this as a sign; filled the kettle and rolled a cigarette while the kettle boiled. He threw it on the road after two or three puffs in disgust.
After the meal Con had lain on the sofa bed listening to the doves cooing; he had slept on and off and then awoke with the orange orb of the sun shining through the windscreen. It was about eight o clock. He cleaned his teeth and left the van for the pub.
The village was quiet and bathed in a warm sepia tinge from the dying sun it resembled a publicity shot for English tourism; the white pub with its thatched roof and black beams seemed cottage-box twee - the English village idyll – something only shattered on crossing the road towards the beer garden when it became apparent to Con that some kind of heated argument was taking place inside; and it was Wolf’s voice that rang loudest.
‘I’m one of the most practical people I know, mate – don’t you accuse me of not living in the real world.’
The other voice, softer and condescending, replied, but Con couldn’t make out the words.
‘Look, I practically built my van from scratch, mate – see these wristbands – I tanned the fucking leather myself, from raw fat covered deer-skin; I’m a fuck sight more adapted to life in this world than you are, mate’
Conall peered round the door nervously; Wolf was standing at the bar, turned to face a small group of men, one in a visi-vest with ‘Wessex archaeology’ on its back, and another man, in a polo-shirt and thick black glasses, his hair hidden under a black baseball cap with an English Heritage logo above the peak. This man was speaking.
‘Yeah, because dressing up in skins and making leather jewellery is so bloody useful. Why don’t you just get a real job like the rest of us have to?’
‘because I played that particular mug’s game for 20 years; I was a builder, and I gave up a two grand a month job to do what I do now.’
‘More fool you.’
‘It was my fookin choice, mate; I’m happier now than I was then. Look at you with your smug fucking grin and EH hat; you’re an unthinking selfish fucking twat; I’m taking responsibility for my life – trying to live as close to nature as I can; I’m not a fucking parasite like you; if society collapsed today you’d be dead in a week; I’d be fine – I can hunt, fish, live in the woods. You’d be robbing Tesco’s like all the other sad fucks and dying of food poisoning cos you couldn't find a way to cook yer fuckin' chicken nuggets without a microwave!’ He laughed. ‘Western civilization is a fucking cancer and you know what we ‘useless hippies’ are?' Wolf walked over to the man, speaking steadily and slowly, and glaring into the other's wide eyes '...We’re the fucking antibodies – we’re the bloody cure, Gaia’s own immune system kicking in to save her from her immanent death at the hands of a rogue fucking disease… so you’d better… bloody…. Watch…. out.’ He said, jabbing his finger in the man’s face as he spoke.
It was obvious that despite his bravado the other man had no wish for this to escalate into a brawl. Wolf, his chest still stained with ochre, looked like some madman. The seated man shifted uncomfortably and then stood and left, casting a barely audible ‘fucking twat’ in Wolf’s direction as he left the pub.
‘Aah – missed all the fun!’ Wolf grinned as he saw Con by the door.
‘What was all that about?’ he asked.
‘Oh, I think some of them got a bollocking for not dealing with the protest effectively, he he – and thought they’d take it out on me – "don’t you have anything better to do"’ he mimicked ‘"why don’t you have a shave and get a real job you hippy layabout" and that kind of shit. Normally I’d have ignored them or twatted them but still got a thumping bastard of a headache, so they got off lucky.’
Con smiled and was about to offer Wolf a drink when Ananda appeared behind the bar holding two pints. ‘On the house’ she whispered, winking.
***
An hour and a half later Con and Wolf were drunk; there had been a number of goodbyes from those who had come to protest and had to head off – most of whom wished to buy Wolf a drink; and a number of others had stayed and sat in small groups around the pub. Then Shen and Hayden had arrived; in the general hubbub Con and Shen hardly had the opportunity to share any words, and so he hadn’t been able to explain his earlier departure, nor smooth over the general air of tension that now lingered between them. To make matters worse Hayden had sat himself between them, squashing himself where there wasn’t really room for another, so Con couldn’t even turn and talk to her, being forced into the corner by Hayden’s large frame. In his inebriated state Con wasn’t in the mood to just sit and stew, either. He was angry, frustrated, upset and spoiling for confrontation.
Hayden wasn’t helping matters by launching into a diatribe against the protestors and their lack of ‘reality’, and the uselessness of any kind of beliefs, pagan or otherwise.
‘Right. Look, science is science…’ he was saying; ‘– it keeps the bullshit at bay; last week we had to cut a 19 year old girl out of a car, and she died by the roadside; she was beautiful. Where was God when she was dying? Would she have been helped by a power animal, or drumming? That’s all crap. It’s all done out of fear – a defence against the dark; it protects people from the nuts and bolts reality that this is all there is and one day, probably sooner than they think – they’ll be on a fucking slab. Where was God or the ancestors when she was dying, or the two old people who died of smoke inhalation on Christmas Day last year thanks to faulty tree lights, eh? Or my own cousin who died when he was eleven, hit by a fucking lorry? I remember my parents and my aunt and uncle going to church after that and all I could think was ‘why would you pray to a God that had taken your son away?’ Fucking ludicrous.’
Hayden’s usual glibness had been replaced with an intense seriousness, but then his swagger returned as he downed his pint.
‘It’s all pretence – look at you with your red paint and your bangles and shit – it’s playground stuff,’ Hayden said. ‘I’m sorry but it’s bullshit – dressing-up like cavemen.’
Wolf looked him squarely in the eyes.
I’m not playing at anything my friend; ochre is one of the oldest body paints used by man; it’s the blood of Mother Earth.
Hayden held Wolf’s gaze, his eyes swimming and his face wearing an expression that looked as if he was wondering if he were brave enough to openly laugh. Con, even though he sided with Wolf, for a moment could hear Wolf’s statement from Hayden’s perspective. Using phrases like ‘the blood of Mother Earth’ wasn’t going to score any points with Hayden.
‘Okay – that’s up to you –‘ Hayden managed to say, straight-faced, ‘but it’s when the place is full of hippies all trying to be like Red Indians, it’s just laughable.’
Con had tried to see Shen’s reaction to the phrase Red Indian; from his limited view he thought he had seen her blanch and sink back into her seat from where she had been leaning forward, nursing her brandy; he couldn’t tell if it was embarrassment or withheld anger. Whatever its cause, his own response was angry.
‘You can’t use that phrase’ he said, his voice shaking.
‘What phrase?’
‘Red Indian; you should say Native American or Canadian or First Nation…’ he corrected.
‘Oh it’s only a figure of speech, man, Christ!’
‘Maybe to you.’ Con answered, looking towards Shen.
‘Oh Shen doesn’t mind, do you?’ Shen just looked at him sternly.
‘Don’t you tell me what I do or don’t mind.’
‘Oh for fucks sake – lighten up you lot. It’s all the same – fucking whingeing on about the past and righting wrongs – but the past is past – we can’t change it; I don’t expect every bloody German I meet to apologise for the war; I’m not gonna fucking apologise for something white people did to the Indians a couple of hundred years ago. I wasn’t there – I didn’t call them those names originally or take their homelands.’
There was a silence. Hayden swallowed a mouthful of beer.
‘It’s like those bones – they ain’t gonna move them ‘cos its irrelevant; you can’t have them back as those days have gone – it’s like the Indians wanting their lands back – that ain’t gonna happen either. Most of those Indians took those same lands from other tribes in the past, and they lost them in turn to superior forces and better fighters – that’s the way of life. Deal with it.’
‘It’s not as simple as ‘might is right’… it was overtly racist; the Indians weren’t seen as human – it was as ideologically based as the holocaust – the only good Indian is a dead Indian.’
Hayden shrugged. ‘Well, obviously you can’t condone it - but what I’m saying is that we’re primed as a species to do this stuff, survival of the fittest, yeah? They didn’t survive. They fumbled the ball… nature judged them by eradicating them…the meek are never gonna inherit the earth, mate.’
Con shook his head. ‘Nature didn’t eradicate the Natives. Man did. Man working against nature, which as a conscious being he can easily do.’
‘How’s it against nature? It’s fucking evolution, man! It IS nature!’
Con tried to think of an example; ‘Nature makes us crave sweet and fat stuff, right? Because there’s not enough in the natural world to really fuck you up. You’d have to eat about 12 feet of sugar cane to get as much sugar as in a can of coke. So… let’s say you’re diabetic… do you just eat all the fucking sugar because ‘nature makes us want it?’ or do you see that man, in a can of coke, has created something unnatural and so you have to rein in the desire, in order not to ultimately kill yourself?
'Where are you going with this?'
'Small scale tribes can do what they want basically as there’s not enough of them to harm the environment – but when you get large numbers of people, technologically advanced, changing the planet, inventing coke, and factory farming, and motorways, then you, like the diabetic, have to rein in the desires that would, given the unnatural nature of modern society, cause death – and I also mean planetary death. So, you choose not to drink the coke, not to drive a car, not to fuck people over for a short-term fix that going to fuck everything up in the long-term.
‘What I’m saying is that the westerners killing off the Indians might seem to be ‘survival of the fittest’ in terms of short-term human goals, for a few generations, but in terms of planetary goals, the Indian, or the modern hippy, is the fittest – the most use for the planet, as he’s the one not burning his own home, the planet; therefore he’s the one most likely to survive, long-term…
‘And maybe the planet knows that. Which is why it’s producing antibodies’ he looked at Wolf who smiled back, ‘whose job is to kill off those after a short-term fix and re-establish a new kind of person who is fittest by their sense of harmony with nature.’
‘But they’ll lose.' Hayden said; 'The normal, greedy, car-driving person is always going to win – just like your bronze age horse-riders killed all the fucking stone age hippies here like you were saying earlier – the only way change will happen is by law, and no politician is going to vote for the changes you suggest because no one will vote for them – give up your cars, phones, air-travel… yeah sure! No one wants that because at the end of the day we’re all selfish.’
‘Then nature will wipe them out. Somehow.’ Wolf said.
‘Well it’ll have to, because despite putting limits on temperature rise and all that stuff, planes are gonna keep flying, cars will only increase in numbers; it’ll take a plague or a comet to knock us back to the Dark Ages – that would work, granted; but not by choice; people are too selfish.’
‘Not everyone; the people here today, that’s a start.’
‘It’s a drop in the ocean, mate. You could go as green as you like, it won’t make one iota of difference.’
Despite feeling anger at what he was saying Con knew Hayden was just stating the facts. People didn’t want to change. They didn’t want climate change, yet they also didn’t want to stop eating burgers or driving to work, or any other labour-saving device that saved labour at the expense of the planet. So how will things change? The myths told how. The wave; the flood; mans’ hubris punished by disaster; he wished there might be another way – but until the majority of people turned round and decided, willingly, to forego comfort and pleasure for long-term goals, it was the only way… and they would only change through pressure, not by choice, or, somehow, by a change of mind – maybe like Wolf’s antibodies, upping resistance bit by bit, until a new kind of person existed, one who actively turned back against the myth of progress and decided to walk another, older path; but it wasn’t really an older path – but a wholly new one; one of sacrifice and humility; and it wouldn’t be easy. It wasn’t that long before, two millennia roundabouts, that they’d crucified someone for saying exactly that.
‘Anyway – what you’re saying is shit.’ Hayden continued. ‘How can the earth create these new people? Evolution has always been about eat or be eaten; it’s an inherent system, a drive – how can the planet create a new type of man? That’s bollocks. The earth isn’t some conscious being that decides what to create; it has no concept of future, or how to remedy this; if something does happen it’s an accident, a random mutation… that’s all this is, random. The earth isn’t sitting there thinking, ooh, I’m a bit hot, better make sure the next generation of humans are yoghurt-weaving fucking stoners who will destroy the motorways and plant trees on them.’
Once more, Con found himself trying not to laugh at Hayden’s observations. He sounded like the voice of reason; his was the sarcastic and amusing mockery that the modern western worldview enjoyed bating any alternatives with; and Con, having been brought up in that culture was torn between alternatives. He, too, could have laughed at this ‘bollocks’, at Wolf, with his red-painted chest and necklaces, talking about Gaia; it was risible. Yet, at the same time, the humour was only skin-deep – a defence, an all-too clever attempt to deny an alternate point of view through what amounted to insults. Con knew that everything Wolf defended was important – not only important, necessary. Necessity demanded, as a species, that we forego our sarcastic modern superior mindset, or we would find ourselves undone by the nemesis brought on by this hubris. He had never experienced, so clearly, how the modern mindset had been so efficiently established in his psyche, from moment to moment, in school and in the media, changing, altering, establishing his thinking, his very perception of the universe, so that he, too, might look on someone as sincere as Wolf and feel like sniggering at his childish and unscientific posing. What a load of bollocks. It would be so easy to say those words, clap Hayden on the back, and breathe easily having fallen back into the dominant culture, normal, safe (for a couple of generations, anyway); he could then laugh at himself, at his childish superstitions – see his unfolding and re-emerging sense of connection to that White Goddess of his youth, as an amusing reversion to an earlier state. He could dismiss it as magical thinking, as the delusion of youth and grief; feel solid again; fit in; breathe…
…except…except….
Except Hayden was simply wrong. The dominant culture, in its hubris, was crumbling; and Wolf, and others like him, Con included, had felt another call – the beat of a different drum – and from where? Con had always felt some sense of connection to nature – and his dreams had presented him with alternative ways of thinking and being; dreams, visions, intuition… this is how the earth would speak…
Whether it was a throwback to earlier times or not, this growing sense among people of a need to return to what were older, archaic values was an attempt, Con saw, to step back to a point in time where man had taken a path towards planetary destruction, and to turn and take another path.
And even if I am a drop in the ocean, he thought, I cannot but act from what I feel to be right; even if I was the only one doing it, and it seemed to make not a jot of difference on a global scale… I, as a natural man, a child of this earth, choose, here and now, to cast off the snide, cynical attitude that I have been indoctrinated with all my life – that has led me to dismiss any sense of connection I ever felt – that made me think I was becoming mad for feeling ‘different’, so that I cast those feelings from me; but you can’t cast nature out; it rises in you like a sap, building and building; and for too long it’s been welling within me, and I’ve been scared of it, scared of my very nature… Con felt a bubbling rage and joy churning within him; and I’ve tried to dam its flow; like someone trying to block a spring with rock and concrete… but it can’t hold; I won’t let it hold any more.
Con, eyes swimming with tears of some emotion he couldn’t name – didn’t dare name – not wanting to further categorise, name, define, catalogue and dismiss what was but a flow of life – leaned forward and took from where it sat on the edge of the table, the small clay pot of greasy red-ochre and oil from Wolf’s tote bag, dipped his fingers in and ran two parallel lines across his face from one cheek to another, across his nose.
Wolf beamed at him.
‘I am the land, that is all that I am.’ Con said, the room suddenly lurching; he was aware, all of a sudden, that he’d drunk a lot more than he’d intended. But fuck it. Fuck it!
‘Jesus!’ Hayden muttered. ‘Here we go…’
‘Oh, just fuck off’
The two men, unbeknown to either, not fully consciously, were tied together in a state of conflict that neither could have, at this moment defined; what seemed on the surface an ideological spat was a much deeper conflict: on the exterior it was a reaction against unwanted aspects of their own personalities seen in the other – Hayden’s sneaking admiration for these ‘hippies’, their sheer enthusiasm and drive, their nobility, which the cynical Hayden wished he might express – and Con’s hard-headed scientific rationalistic side, a product of the west, that threatened the existence of his soul, newly born again in this glorious inebriated moment; but underneath, a deeper current ran that involved jealously on both sides for what they thought were Shen’s affections for the other; for what else had they been arguing over? What was this but that perennial battle for the hand of the sun-maiden? Who else was the earth each wanted to inherit but the dark-haired embodiment of life-to-be-lived, vivacity and promise, that was this girl, and no other, Shenandoah Derdriu Mac Govan-Crow, whose thunderous looks betrayed a discomfort at the prehistoric chest-beating going on to her right.
Hayden looked at him open mouthed.
‘Go get me another pint and I may overlook that comment.’
Conall stayed in his seat, feeling a drip of ochre running down his cheek.
‘Get your own fucking pint.’ Con hissed, aware this was an attempt for Hayden to assert alpha-status and drunk enough not to let it go unchallenged.
‘Now don’t take the piss, mate… Get me a fucking drink and we’ll let this lie…’ and then, out of the blue, ‘– I’ve seen the way you look at Shen. You’re another fucking dreamer with no idea of the real world...’ he leaned over, pulled Shen towards him; ‘survival of the fucking fittest mate, survival of the fittest’ and he kissed her on the mouth.
Con was not a brawler; wits before fists was his way, yet in his drunken frustration, with all that had built up within him over the last couple of days, he acted before thinking, pulling Hayden back from his embrace with the clearly uncomfortable Shen, whose hands were up trying to push Hayden away.
‘What the fuck, Hayden?’ she spat, angrily.
And then Con was slammed into the table, glasses knocked aside – one shattering on the floor; he’d been elbowed rather than punched; and he struggled to get up feeling dizzy and mortified, his t-shirt soaked with beer – everything seemed far away as if seen down the wrong end of a telescope; Wolf had reached over the table, helping Con to his feet, and mouthing words but Con wasn’t understanding; he could see Shen and Hayden snarling at each other but as he found his feet he lunged at Hayden and swung his fist at the latter’s face, and missed – Hayden pushed forward and grabbed Con by the upper arm and seemed ready to punch him in return, but Shen was pulling him one way and Wolf had slowly extended his hand to hold Hayden’s arm back.
‘Calm it mate. Calm it,’ he was saying; Shen glanced across at Conall with what could have been a look of disdain or pity, and Con turned, pushed through the assembled bodies, and walked from the pub, still reeling.
Chapter 39: On Silbury Hill
The colour was back in Piggott’s cheeks and he was smiling and sipping on his brandy.
‘Oh, I feel so much better; I’d not slept well the last couple of nights, and. I just kept getting waves of heat during dinner; it felt so stuffy and the atmosphere didn’t help...’
Lewis guffawed. ‘That was potentially one of the most socially awkward meals of my life. I couldn’t believe the audacity of the man, presuming all knowledge began and ended with him; I’ve never seen you look like you might explode, Tollers.’
‘I was literally dumbstruck at points.’ Tolkien admitted; ‘I am glad you came to my rescue, Owen.’
‘Poor Alexander! said Piggott. ‘He’s been treading on eggshells for the past two days trying to keep Petrie sweet; I fear Petrie’s going to return to his society friends in London with a less than glowing report on the work here…’
‘Does he hold much sway?’ Lewis asked.
‘Yes, with the Old Guard; but Alexander was never in their favour. I, too, have been told I have sabotaged my future career as an archaeologist because I’ve chosen to work under Keiller. But this is where my passion lies – and if it weren’t for Keiller I’d still be some office junior.’
He finished his drink and smiled.
‘Well thank you gentlemen for escorting me back. I’m dead tired; I can hardly keep my eyes open, so I think it’s time I retired.’
Once Piggott had gone back to his room in the pub, the three friends sat nursing their emptying beer mugs. At that moment the crowd parted, and George Mac Gowan-Crow appeared beside them.
After receiving compliments for the quality of his vegetables, which he waved off as early spring trifles, thanks to the glasshouses at the Manor, he became more serious. ‘You missed some trouble earlier tonight, my friends. George said, drawing on his pipe.
‘A group of black-shirts arrived on motorcycles looking for room to stay the night but there was no room, and besides, they wouldn’t have been welcome.’
Tolkien exchanged glances with his friends. ‘Sounds like the same group that the Penry-Evans’s saw earlier.’ He suggested.
‘What happened?’ Asked Lewis.
‘They got a bit loud – there was some shouting, but we managed to persuade them to leave. They didn’t take too kindly to being manhandled by a ‘gypsy’ as they put it, but hopefully they’ll not be back. Us Wiltshire folk know how to deal with outsiders.’ He looked at the men and winked.
‘Do you realise it’s not yet ten o’clock?’ Lewis said. ‘I had told your good lady wife not to expect us back until much later. I feel we might disturb her peace if we returned now. Should we have another drink?’
Tolkien shook his head. ‘I’ve had more than enough; anymore and I’ll be in a stupor. I suggest we go for a stroll and walk it off.’
‘Splendid idea.’ Lewis replied. ‘Do you have anywhere in mind?’
‘Yes. We’re leaving tomorrow and we’ve yet to climb Silbury Hill. It would be quite an adventure in the dark, what?’
Lewis, who had regained all his lost enthusiasm drummed on the table with both hands. ‘A better idea, I simply couldn’t imagine, Tollers! Drink up, Owen! We’re going on an adventure!’.
…
The three friends were following a path through the long grass, ahead of them George Mac Govan-Crow lead the way, every now and again looking back to make sure his wards were following.
‘It isn’t a difficult path, sirs, but I know the best place to begin the climb, is all.’ He said. He walked almost silently through the fields, unlike the noisy trampling feet of the others, who were hindered by a large supper and copious drinks.
The path up Silbury wound anticlockwise from the bank of the moat to the summit; it was not steep but the three men were still breathless when they stopped; not a word was spoken as they gathered together on the broad flat expanse that topped the mound and gazed in unison westwards to where the half-moon lay beside the Twins directly above the flickering blue of Sirius, about to set below the distant hills. The valley below was coal-black, with a thin rill of mist marking the meanderings of the river, slowly curling and undulating in the sheltered lowland, far below the summit, which was being clipped by a fresh breeze.
‘Orion is nearly gone, now summer is arriving.’ Tolkien said. ‘I shall miss him over Oxford, but am always heartened when he returns with the frost near to Christmas.’
‘Surely they built this here to look at the sky’ Barfield said, ‘Just look!’
‘That would make sense.’ Replied Lewis, ‘you could probably get a hundred people or so up here at a push, maybe it was like mayday morning at Magdalen, some great pagan Hymnus Eucharisticus being sung from the this Great Tower – or do you think it was reserved for a single star-gazer? An astronomer king?’
‘Perhaps if it was originally higher, then,’ Barfield suggested, ‘any tomb or burial may have been destroyed all those years ago, when, I believe, the Normans re-used this as a motte. Perhaps Merlin really once lay here – only to find himself smashed and discarded by the spade of a Norman soldier.’
‘Well, if we are to believe the legend he was enchanted into a tower of air or beneath a great stone by the enchantress Vivien, the lady of the lake.’ Lewis countered. ‘Tower of air this may be, but certainly not under stone – West Kennet, yonder,’ he said, pointing to the southern horizon, where the great tomb lay, ‘might have been more suitable for that.’
‘Of course, you old fool!’ Tolkien suddenly chuckled, ‘Thank you Jack! I hadn’t even begun to put two and two together… Boann, she of the fairy mound at Newgrange, and Vivien are related, etymologically – they both derive from Bovinda – white cow – they’re the same woman, though why I hadn’t made this connection before I don’t know! The woman Vivien has the guile to cheat the magical secrets from the old enchanter, just as Boannd tries to steal knowledge from her husband Nechtan’s well!’
He clapped his hands together in glee, then rubbed them together for warmth; his pipe stuck between his grinning teeth.
‘Nut the white cow of Egypt becomes the sky after separating from Geb, the earth god, who becomes the land itself; Boannd becomes the river Boyne and the Milky Way – and like Geb, Merlin becomes trapped ‘in the earth’ under the stone; he’s part of creation – and therefore, if the myth stands, he needs a twin, a Nut, a Boannd – a Vivien – and surely, as the Milky Way, she ought to be in the sky… but is there any indication he was a twin save his name? I’m sure, sure there is, if only I could remember it! Darn the lack of a library on this cursed walk!’ he stuttered, only half joking.
The cool wind changed direction and they turned their collars up against the cold.
‘Woman and knowledge…’ Lewis mused; ‘Why is it Eve who eats the apple, and Boannd and Vivien that seek the wisdom of magic? And why does it always lead to catastrophe?’
‘I don’t know;’ Barfield answered; ‘it has always seemed to me that knowledge, of whatever form, bears better fruit in the female mind than the male; perhaps the myth is somewhat chauvinistic and twisted from its origins.’
Lewis nodded, silently. ‘There may be truth in that, granted; Christ, after all, appeared first to the Magdalene after he had escaped the tomb. He trusted her with his message rather than that rag-tag gaggle of male disciples…’
‘While Merlin still lies in his tomb, wherever that might be.’ Tolkien said, his mind still on the enchanter.
‘And what tales he would tell were he to rise!’ Lewis beamed.
‘Perhaps the Normans didn’t level this site;’ Tolkien was musing, ‘perhaps a tower stood here before, long, long ago…’
‘The Hill of Winds’ he thought to himself. Built high above the flood plains, a tower from the old country, long drowned under the sea…
He looked to where George sat perched on his haunches at the edge of the mound, peering out over the valley below. Perhaps men in the past had squatted there, too – their eyes keenly surveying the horizon for the newcomers on their steeds. So George’s more recent ancestors had crouched on hills and mesas, scouting the approach of the riders from the east who sought gold, land, and game – and destroying all in their path - eyes and lips narrow with greed.
Lewis looked down over the valley of the Kennet.
‘We’ve come a long way, it feels, since we walked beside the river of the bright dog;’ he mused. ‘From dragons to dogs to the enchanter Merlin… are they connected do you think?’
Tolkien smiled to himself and began to recite an old anonymous Celtic verse:
Merlin! Merlin! Where are you going
So early in the day, with your black dog?
I have come here to search the way,
To find the red egg;
The red egg of the marine serpent,
By the sea-side in the hollow of the stone.
I am going to seek in the valley
The green water-cress and the golden grass,
And the top branch of the oak,
In the wood by the side of the fountain.
Merlin! Merlin! Retrace your steps;
Leave the branch on the oak,
And the green water-cress in the valley,
As well as the golden grass;
And leave the red egg of the marine serpent,
In the foam by the hollow of the stone.
Merlin! Merlin! Retrace your steps,
There is no diviner but God.
And the n he began to talk, though whether to the others or just to himself wasn’t clear…
‘Merlin, like Ymir is dismembered to form the world, he is sacrificed so that the circle can be built – for the circle is symbolic of the whole of the world, of the cosmos. He dies, and yet somewhere he remains, asleep, in a dream, ready to pass on its knowledge of the state of things before the fall, before the flood…’ he looked up at the milky river in the heavens,
‘and the woman who took that knowledge, freed it from his grasp, bears its light – as Boann, as Sopdet the white cow, as Isis, as the star Sirius who heralds the flood, but who brings the light to man, the light of rebirth, of renewal. So Vivien learns wisdom from the mouth of the old prophet and steals his power from him; imprisoning him with his own enchantments - drinks from the cup of knowledge, the milk of paradise, the draught of poetic inspiration, which returns us to that blissful unity of Eden when man and god walked in the garden in the cool of the day.’
Barfield and Lewis looked at Tolkien, not wishing to disturb his reverie.
‘And here we stand on his hill, the hill of the sun-eye, the hill of Sulis, she of the winding waterways, both above and below; this,’ he said, holding his arms up to the sky and turning about him as if taking in the whole of the blessed Wiltshire landscape, so magical under the crescent moon; ‘this is the place of the primal unity; this is the land formed by the rending apart of the twins… this is Ymir’s-bury; it is Emrys’s spinning castle; Merlin’s magical circle… the place where creation began…’
’You see,’ he said, louder now, turning to his friends, ‘it isn’t a case of whether it actually happened or not, I’ve been a fool. That is a modern distinction brought about by our paucity of language: myth or history? There is no ‘or’! The two are one – only our feeble modern worldview seeks to prise them apart. To try to ask if my dream of Atlantis or my visions of Eärendil and the fall of Numenor was literally true is like trying to measure love… the whole premise is wrong! History, time, reality – what if these are but modern measuring systems that would seek to divide the world into a machine of parts, no more… and say nothing of the underlying nature of the world as it is… like your poetic language, Owen, that sees the world as full of meaning; I’ve been guilty of thinking too prosaically rather than poetically; seeking rigid, measurable confirmation for something that is, at heart, poetic, and no less real for it – a thousand times more real, in fact!’
And he stared down over the dark plain where the mist now cleared from the stream, so that it lay silvered like a serpent under the moon.
‘One day the horse lords came here and they made the myth history; just as Christ had been prefigured by those ancient corn gods, so when the new people came and met the old ones and their priest, they seized their land and women and cows, just as the myth told them had always been done; just as the sun had to be rescued from the serpent of winter, so they wrestled with the Old One and cast him down…’ Tolkien was looking out to the horizon, his words coming from a place outside of him…
‘he was Emrys, Ymir, and they brought him to the stones and like the old serpent god they destroyed him and threw him down; made of him the earth - buried him under a stone and claimed the place for their own; they took the cup of the mysteries and drank it; but still he sleeps, this ancient one, bearer of knowledge of before the fall, before the flood, from a time when bird and beast and fish were one with man… and one day he will return…one day he will be released from his prison of glass…’
Below them a barn owl wheeled silently across the valley; stopping to hover for a moment before wheeling off again towards the copse of trees where the Swallowhead spring lay.
Barfield softly spoke a verse of Coleridge to the winds:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
‘I wish we could drink that milk and see these myths as they had.’ Tolkien said, having broken from his vision; ‘The flood… Nile or Boyne or Milky Way, or the flood that swamped Atlantis or the metaphysical flood that ended man’s state of unity with the divine… to see it united, as poetry, rather than fragmented, either, or…? What then can we do? How can we restore it, give it voice?’ his voice trembled.
‘We must sing the myth forward,’ said Lewis. ‘We can be the mouthpiece for Merlin – sing the old stories forward. We can be the voice. We must tell the stories.
***
After a few minutes of sitting silently a number of pin-points of light appeared from the eastern horizon near the Sanctuary and drifted westwards; soon they were accompanied by the deep rumble of engines; the peace of the evenings was disturbed as the motorcycles approached and stopped near the foot of the hill on which the friends were sitting. Here the land was higher where the road rose over the hill and it formed a kind of land-bridge across the moat to the hill, and the men parked their bikes and their loud voices and laughter could be heard; then the smashing of a bottle and more laughter.
George turned to the friends; ‘I fear it’s the blackshirts from earlier.’ he said.
‘What do we do?’ Lewis asked, peering around for an alternative route down. ‘I don’t want to be sat here all-night listening to that – and if they decide to come up here…’
Tolkien nodded. ‘Then we best just go down and leave them to it. Better we leave now than surprise them if they decide to climb the hill. Besides, if we go down, we’re closer to the road and we can just leave.’
Whistling and talking so they didn’t arrive suddenly and by surprise, the four men made their way down to the foot of the hill where the bike gang had parked and were starting to build a fire.
‘Christ! Nearly gave me a fuckin’ ‘heart attack mate’ one laughed as Tolkien reached the level ground and appeared in the firelight. Lewis and Barfield arrived next, and then George.
‘Hang on,’ another biker barked; ‘it’s that fucking gypsy from the pub!’
A weasel-faced young man who had eventually managed to get the fire lit, stood, still holding a smoking stick. ‘You little shit!’ he began saying, striding towards George. But Tolkien barred his way.
‘Out of the way, old man.’ He sneered. ‘We owe that gypsy fellow a beating.’
‘You’ll take not a single step forward, my lad, or it’s a beating you’ll get.’
‘Is that a threat? Hear that lads, granddad is going to rough us up!’ he laughed, leering close.
Tolkien lifted his walking stick high above his head, his eyes sparking.
‘Do not mistake me for some weak old fool! I did not fight through fire and mud in the trenches of Flanders so selfish fools like you could play with our liberty! Go back whence you came. Ne Paseran! You shall not pass!’ and he waved his walking stick at him in defiance.
Perhaps because of his mention of having fought for his country, but a tall man who had been hitherto standing near the fence away from the small fire moved forward at those words and spoke.
‘Come on, leave him be Mitch – it’s not worth the trouble.’ The tall man was older, Tolkien’s age; a look passed between them that suggested this man, too, had fought, and was not about to see a fellow veteran beaten for the sake of revenge on some gyppo.
‘But Campbell…’
‘Leave him!’ the man named Campbell shouted; and in silence the four friends left he hill and walked calmly on to the road.
Chapter 40: The River of Milk
He walked and walked, his mind ablaze; his mouth set firm and his eyes fixed ahead, shedding lines of tears that he never stopped to wipe away.
Inside he was in conflict, a sickening spiralling of anger and fear – half of him wanting to go back and apologise and for Shen to look on him kindly, the other wanting to go back and pummel Hayden’s smug face into a bloody mess. But what would that achieve? He had already bloody won; Shen was his, not Con’s. A great tug of war was taking place in his soul; and he swung from one extreme to the other.
He had crossed the Silbury road before he realised why he was heading for the river, the deed he had gone there to do: the same deed he had failed that day the previous April on the night Melissa had died. But he did not know if he sought rebirth or dissolution. And in the moment of that realisation, with nothing left to lose or fight for, he felt as if the earth had crumbled beneath him and that he were falling further into the abyss... caring no more to protect himself from his own grief and anger a deeper darkness took him than any he had ever known and engulfed him, save for one small ember of anger that glowed deep down; so standing on the edge of the road, looking up at the stars he shouted, venting his rage….
'Am I to be judged by THAT?!!' he shouted at the sky. 'Christ I am GLAD I’m not like that! I’m glad I’m a fucking dreamer! I’d rather be poor and free every day of my life than, than THAT!’ he spat.
He tasted salt; and then in the blurry darkness beyond he thought he saw the shape of something dark against the lesser darkness of the fields; something coal-black sloping away towards the river; and he followed, no longer afraid; willing the dark hound to take him. And he followed where it had seemed to lead, towards the stream.
A faint breeze ruffled the surface of the river…
‘I am what I fucking am!’ He repeated. And in the void that punctuated this angry cry, which was nothing less than an affirmation of his true character and the taking of responsibility for every single one of his past actions, in the twinkling of an eye, all was changed… a realisation he had passed a point of no return; that he would no longer return to how he had been, scared to be who he was…
…and in the swirling, stinging veil of his tears he saw on the opposite bank not the dark crouched apparition he had glimpsed moments before, but, below the white of the moon, a smudge, a white phantom, a dream; a dark-haired girl on the banks of the river of Paradise; her hand waving, not beckoning, but sending him back; warning him…
Then it was gone, and a silent cry welled up from his throat, gasping.
‘Mel..?’ he whispered. There was no reply save the wind in the grasses; hissing like snakes; they seemed to say he could not join her, only by entering the river, and to enter the river, was to die.
He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand; salty wetness smeared with red-ochre…
He took off his shoes and began to strip, walking resolutely into the gurgling cold waters; until shaking uncontrollably, he knelt in the holy water, he did not lay down and drink deep as his sister had done, no – he remained upright and splashed three great handfuls of the chill water over his face and shoulders, gasping.
‘Release me, Mother… May all that was hindering me, begone!’ he shouted. ‘I am what I am; no man nor woman will ever change that. Fuck them all. Because you know what? I choose me! I choose me! I admire the person I am; I’ve fucked up in the past, but only as I worried what others thought. I don’t act for them anymore… I stand naked before you!’ he addressed the crescent moon, floating above the brows of Pegasus, near the gushing waters of Aquarius…; ‘see me for who I am!!!’ and he stood up in the water, his arms outstretched, his eyes seemed to roll up into his head… as it seemed wave upon wave of grace flowed up through his entire body…
‘I. AM. PUCK!!!’
And then he slipped; the slimy rock under his foot seemed to shift in the water and he twisted and fell, his foot caught between the rock and the roots of a strong Elder sapling on the bankside; and he teetered and fell to the side, catching his side on a half-submerged branch that tore a hole in his shirt and scraped at the skin; he felt his side hit the water and then all was black and freezing cold and muffled; he kicked out but his foot was held fast; he shouted and it burst out of him as bubbles; his ankle and side screaming with pain, he was encased in a shroud of black ice and he pushed out with his arms, ineffectually, trying to lift himself out of the water, but only managed to scrape great clouds of chalky debris up from the floor of the stream.
No thoughts came – just a wave of terror like he had never felt before; he was going to drown here; and then a surge of energy burst through him as he struggled for his life, a berserker rage that saw his limbs flailing in all directions – not knowing which way was up – and he involuntarily drew in a breath – a mouthful of the brackish blackness; his eyes wide in horror seeing nothing but flashing stars… his neck seeming to snap back, the bones feeling like they were breaking, and then a silence deeper than he had ever known, a void on the edge of eternity…
Then suddenly something was around him – pulling him backwards – arms around his chest, wrenching him backwards from the watery abyss back into time - turning him, dragging him half up the reed covered bank.
‘Fookin’ breathe man!’
With a rasping inrush of slimy water and air Con’s lungs which had closed off to protect themselves finally opened – a great glut of choking stuff lodged halfway down his throat and then was expelled.
Con lent forward, eyes streaming as he coughed and retched violently; mud, water, then sickly sour beer ejected with a splash into the water below; twice again he heaved and emptied his throat and stomach; he was nothing but a void, emptying, emptying, until he lay shaking violently, tears streaming from his eyes, on the bank, and wiped the snot and puke from his mouth.
Wolf was speaking, but Con understood nothing, he was weeping uncontrollably; Wolf was there directly before him;
‘Get up, come on – just get onto the grass – you’re in shock.’
Numb and vacant he took Wolf’s proffered arm and dragged himself on legs made of jelly onto the grass; a wave of nausea hit him and he retched again, and then he lay on the grass, on his side, eyes now wide open and his body shaking, uncontrollably weeping.
‘What were you doing, man?’ Wolf was asking.
‘I slipped. Accident… thank you.’ Con managed between deep breaths.
He looked skywards and felt a shaking deep inside, and then a sensed light; for that ember of anger, that tiny pin-prick of light in the dark of the abyss, had in the moment it was vocalised relit in his being a fire long smothered; Conall was free, as free as the moment he had emerged from his mother’s womb – naked, shivering, wet with the waters of the Kennet – he had crossed from one state to another; the old him - what had really been but a shell of phobias, an armoured mask defending itself from the threat of change, of death, of his own reality that so sacred him, had itself died, drowned in those waters of despair, and as he had crumbled he had been reconstituted, and he cried out with joy like a new-born hearing the sound for the first time.
His mind was a blossoming of new emotions – unfettered joy and deep, deep sorrow. Understanding.
‘I’m not afraid anymore, Mel! I’m not afraid!!!’ he shouted, and the tears that mixed with the river water on his cheeks were tears of joy. He looked up at the stars and saw them for what they were, not thermonuclear furnaces creating matter but great beings of immeasurable age, singing the cosmos into being… and at that moment he knew, just knew, that he had existed in one form or another since the beginning of time and that he and they would always exist; he had stepped out of time and the scales had fallen from his eyes; what was time? It had ceased to have meaning - he felt in an instant the genetic history of his entire being… from man to ape to mammal back to the first fish swimming in the primal oceans, whose origins were still remembered in the sea-like saltiness of his blood; millions upon millions of years and millions upon millions of lives rising into being and annihilation; and they were not separate from him, they were him and in that transformative moment he did not know whether Conall Astor was a creature of flesh or fish… or where the stars ended and where he began, for there was no difference - all was one; all had always been one; and all would always be one.
A few minutes later they were walking back from the river, Wolf’s arm supporting Con, who was walking in a kind of trance.
‘There’s something you should know about Melissa,’ he said. ‘She killed herself, Wolf. We told everyone that she’d drowned by accident – but she didn’t.’
‘Shit, man. Shit. I’m so sorry.’
‘We didn’t want any copycat deaths – fans aping what she did; so, we said it was an accident; but the death certificate and the coroner ruled she had killed herself. She had three times the legal limit of alcohol in her blood; she’d written a short note – in her book, the one I showed you the other morning – and she’d left it open on the riverbank on that page.
I’m going to the river to die; to die, Wolf – that’s what she’d said:
No more to drink the milk of paradise ’
‘I was here, Wolf. I got a phone-call from her husband to say that she’d gone missing and I just assumed she’d run away with someone else. Tony was a wanker – and she’d gone and so I was happy, I didn’t think twice. I didn’t know she was in this state. I was here – I didn’t go and look for her. I was too besotted with Shen; I should have gone but I didn’t – I was here laughing and kissing and happy and my twin sister was already dead…the night before Tony’s text...’
Oh my poor Melissa. Poor Titania.
‘She’d put stones in her bag to weigh her down.’
‘It’s not your fault, Con. What could you have done?’
‘I could have listened. She seemed happy but maybe she had just become resolute at what she wanted to do. She told me she’d been writing lyrics about death, for fuck’s sake and I didn’t see what she was trying to say.
‘The day I kissed Shen on West Kennet was the day I got the message. I ignored it, Wolf – I thought deal with it Anthony, she’s left you. And by then she was already dead. And I didn’t know.’ His breath had calmed slightly. He paused then turned to look Wolf in the eyes.
‘Aren’t twins supposed to know? Shouldn’t I have felt it? But that night, the night before his text, I had come here, I’d had a dream, years before – of submerging myself in a river, and that night I just had this urge to come here and enact it; but when I was standing on that bank there, deciding not to wade in, she was actually doing it. I didn’t put the two together until a few days later when my Mum rang to tell me they’d found her body. When she rang, I just left. I didn’t tell Shen why I had gone. I didn’t say goodbye I just left.’
‘Even if you’d gone after you got Anthony’s message it would have been too late, Con.’ Wolf said.
Con shrugged. ‘But I still ignored it – I can’t believe I stayed and just dismissed it. I can’t believe I ignored the warning signs from her; she must have been trying to tell me those last few times we met. I was selfish.’
‘You can’t save her Con, you couldn’t have saved her then, either. In this shitty world you can only save yourself.’
Con stared at the sky.
‘And you know what?’ Wolf said.
‘Hmm?’
‘It’s not Shen’s fault either.’
‘I never said it was.’
‘You were happy here and you think you should have been fucking miserable or you should have been there and stopped it; but you carried on. I think you think your intoxication with Shen blinded you to something you should have been feeling. That somehow being here with her was wrong; and so, for you Shen somehow represents that wrong. But it’s not her fault.’
‘I know it’s not’
‘But you act like it is. You keep her at arm’s length. You’re distant – she says you’re distant; that you’re not who you were. You need to do two things: forgive yourself and forgive her; you were happy, you deserve that. You can’t change what happened; all you can do is change how you react to it.’
‘Have I fucked it up?’ Con asked, shaken.
‘No mate; not at all. Life goes on. You have to go on. Start again.’
Chapter 41 Belonging
A lone figure was walking the high banks of the circle along the path that lead from the southern entrance to the copse of tall trees at the eastern entrance; the roots of the trees sprawled and twisted down the bank like a river of entwined serpents, and it was over these roots the figure stepped, making her way up to the mighty trees. She stopped and lay her arms about the trunk of one, and gently rested her forehead against its smooth moon-pale bark.
Her lips moved in what may have been a silent prayer, but any passer-by would not have understood the words of those breathed syllables had they been close enough to hear, for they were in a language never spoken in this land, a language hundreds, maybe thousands of years old, born of a land of forest, mountain and prairie an ocean away.
She lifted her head and watched the tangled web of branches creak and shift before the moon; her unbound hair ran down her back like a shadow, and down her small dark face glistened two lines of tears.
Shenandoah felt very alone; perhaps she had always felt this way. In a way she envied these trees, rooted in this ancient earth; she, too, was of this land, but a large part of her didn’t belong; and yet neither did she feel she belonged anywhere else – if she returned to Canada to be amongst her great-grandfather’s people would she feel any more rooted there? She doubted it; that’s why it’s not about blood and bone, she mused, my connection to Itsipaiitapio’pah isn’t through blood, but through spirit. She felt like some windblown seed of some exotic flower that had taken root in foreign climes, but one still drawing sustenance from this earth; whether such a flower ‘belonged’ or not it still drew nourishment from the earth and blossomed in the light of the same sun; belonging wasn’t to do with how long your ancestors had been in a certain place; belonging was about now, about people alive today, she thought; it was about friendship and acceptance. Shenandoah’s sense of belonging was not about being Irish or Native Canadian, these were her people only in the loosest sense; no, it was about finding others who shared her beliefs and values, her passions and hopes; her sense of the mystery of the cosmos, of the sanctity of nature and life, of consciousness of the natural order of things; of belonging not to this or that tribe, but to the Earth. And this is why Shenandoah was weeping; for she had thought she had found such a friend, but he had walked away.
She turned and sat against the trunk, and took her purse from her bag; there, folded amongst receipts and her business cards was a sheet of paper. It was a letter; and she read it through her tears.
2nd June 2011
Shenandoah,
There’s no easy way to say this; it was my sister Melissa’s funeral today; she died in a tragic accident. I apologise for the handwriting but I’m drunk. I wish you all the happiness you deserve but it’s probably for the best if we don’t contact each other again.
Conall
Two emotions were tearing at her heart; such sadness for Conall; he had been so happy and full of life and this just sounded so sad; and anger, for which she felt a horrible guilt, feeling so selfish for even allowing it to surface. June 2nd. But he had left Avebury some three weeks earlier, way before the accident, without so much as a goodbye. What had been his excuse then, before his sister had died?
She remembered the day he left. She had texted him and got no reply and had walked down the avenue to find his camper gone. Had she meant so little to him that he should leave without seeing her? What had she been, some kind of holiday fling? She couldn’t reconcile this with how he had been with her. She had felt that they had so much in common; a shared way of looking at the world; she had felt this was someone she could trust; dare she say it she had thought this someone she could grow to love. He had understood her; her quirks; her love of the stars and her fear of great waves.
The first week she was shocked and worried; then she felt a fool and the worry turned to anger. When the letter came, she just felt dead inside. She cried for him and his loss; cried for her loss too. How could she help him if he just wanted to cut her off? Was he just using what had happened as a conveniently arising excuse to cut her out his life? She had texted and written him several emails, the last had begged him just to be civil and let her know if she should just forget him and move on. It was an appalling thought and she felt guilty for having it, but surely, he hadn’t used Mel’s death to such ends? But at least he had written, and in the circumstances, she didn’t know whether to write back and console him; she didn’t want to be an added problem at such a time.
She had never told her Granddad. He had asked about Con, but she had said she hoped one day he’d be back, but he had suffered a great loss and was taking time to grieve. A few weeks later Alfred’s health had declined severely, and he had died of pneumonia in his bed at the cottage. On that last day he had squeezed her hand and told her to be happy at all costs. And he had said that Con would come back; that’s what she meant when she had said to him in the pub two days before today she had kind of known she would see him again; he had asked if she’d seen it in the cards and she said no.
When she saw her Grandfather’s will leaving Con his flute it grieved her; she felt the old man had had some kind of naïve trust in the man that it seems was unwarranted. She had not meant that much to him, and she would in all likelihood never see him again. It was ridiculous anyway – she had only spent 4 days with him; it was no time at all to gauge another; all that sense of a shared worldview was probably illusory.
A couple of weeks after Alfred’s funeral she had made a decision that it was time to move on; she had let Con know about Alfred by letter, giving him the chance, if he wished, to reply, but none was forthcoming. She had resolved to walk to West Kennet and to return to the Swallowhead spring the piece of chalk he had given her there – but she never got that far; just beyond the Beckhampton to Avebury road, where the path meets the river on its way towards Silbury hill she had felt a pain in her ankle and looked down in horror to see an adder slide away into the long grass; panicking she had fled back to the road and burst into tears asking the first person she saw for help; it had been Hayden. The great spirit, she thought, had sent her a saviour, someone to replace Con. But the chalk pebble was still in her handbag.
Hayden was a good man; loyal, charming, good-looking, intelligent. A darn sight more practical than the dreamer Con would have been, she had consoled herself by thinking; and what did it matter if Hayden wasn’t as entranced by her ancestry and her mystical flights of fancy? None of her previous boyfriends had been, and she had learned to keep that side hidden. Maybe it was meant to be hidden; maybe she really was alone, and Con hadn’t really thought the same way; he’d just played along with her. But he had seemed different - a world away from the men she’d usually dated; full of bravado, all mouth – Con had been somewhat shy, quiet, yet fired up when he wanted to be; he was a dark horse, a lot more simmered under that calm surface than he let on; yes, she liked the attention of those jack the lads; but underneath they bored her; she liked the attention but when she had it she found she didn’t want what they really had to offer once the charm began to wear thin;
It wouldn’t be true to say that she hadn’t thought about Con when she had moved back here in the early spring; but she loved, she thought, Hayden, and she wanted to be nearer to him; Scilly was too far away, and the idea of coming back to her granddad’s house was so appealing. She’d soon stopped looking for Con’s dark tousled locks amongst the crowds in the village. Until a few days ago.
It had been lovely to see him; but he had been cool, distant – still sweet, still full of the same ideas; and they had talked, but he didn’t seem he wanted anything more. She had so wanted to ask him why he hadn’t written, but she didn’t have the courage. He seemed too fragile for a start, and did she really need him to say, again, that he just didn’t have those feelings for her?
But at the Devil’s chair – when he’d told her his dream of the waves and the building of the temple – she was sure he had meant that she had been the woman in the dream – but when she had got close he had backed off. The thought sickened her.
Tonight she should have followed him; she was proud of what he had done, standing up to Hayden; Hayden hadn’t meant any harm he just hadn’t thought as usual; no – it was more than that – he knew; knew she had feelings for Con; poor Hayden – and he’d been angry and defensive; but what he had done to Con was unforgiveable; Shen hadn’t known what to do; as Con had left she had got up to follow but Hayden had grabbed her arm. ‘You dare!’ he had said. ‘It’s okay’ Wolf had said, ‘I’ll go’, but he had come back in after a couple of minutes; Con had vanished; Wolf had headed for the cove, following someone he thought was Con but it hadn’t been him. ‘Maybe he’s gone back to his van.’ Wolf had said, but Shen had had another thought. She didn’t know why – she had no reason to suppose he’d go there, a place that had been special to them as it was.
‘Try the Swallowhead.’ She said.
A few minutes later she had left the pub herself, alone. She had told Hayden it wasn’t working; she wasn’t happy; ‘Do you still have feelings for Con?’ he had asked. She hadn’t lied; Hayden stood up and walked out, turning as he left to simply say he wasn’t a fucking mug and there were no second chances; it was her loss. Putting on a tough exterior to the end, Shen thought. She could see he was hurt. Part of her had wanted to put her arms round him so that those tears she had seen welling up in his angry eyes might not be shed, like she had when he’d first told her about his cousin dying when they were children and how he’d rowed with his mother and father, telling them he’d never go to church again as God wasn’t kind, but a bastard… But she simply couldn’t do it. All it would have taken was to walk a few steps forward, and she couldn’t do it.
And now she was here; she’d blown it with Hayden and the man she had feelings for had shown her little sign he might feel the same; all his actions could be interpreted as friendship, nothing more. Shen was steeling herself; he walked away once and could so easily do it again. I don’t think he’s a bastard, she thought; I had to believe he was before to get through this; the fact is I don’t know why he did what he did, I just know we get on so well; I just wish I had the chance to speak my mind – but it sounds so selfish demanding why he hadn’t been in touch after all he’s been through; it sounds petty; the answer is obvious: he doesn’t feel the same.; perhaps he never did. But her hand went to the chalk pebble in her purse. You can’t base a relationship on a single day, she reasoned – but that day, when we sat by the spring and he gave me the pebble, and we kissed on West Kennet, I know he could have loved me; loved me, understood me, treasured me. Rescued me, even, from this wasteland of un-belonging.