Sarum (20 page)
Authors: Edward Rutherfurd
Nooma was excited that the priests had chosen him to build the new henge: not only was this a great honour that made him stick out his chest with pride, but it was also a challenge to his craftsmanship; and he hurried towards the sacred grounds with eager anticipation.
But when he heard the priests’ instructions, and when finally he comprehended the enormous scale of their plan, and the short time in which the work was to be completed, his solemn eyes grew larger. Despite the chill autumn day, he felt small beads of perspiration breaking out on his broad forehead.
“Such huge stones? Completed in ten years?” It was a wail of dismay.
The priests took no notice of his protests, and now the little mason began to tremble with fear. How could such a vast temple be completed so quickly? It would need an army of masons! But as he looked into the impassive faces of Dluc’s priests, he had no doubt of his fate if he failed him.
“They will give me to the sun god,” he thought. “They will sacrifice me at dawn.”
When the priests next showed him the drawings that the High Priest had made, and he bent his head to study them, his large oval face fell even further.
“Nothing like this has ever been done before,” he muttered as he stared at the great arches. And jabbing his finger at one of the drawings he protested: “How am I to do that?”
For Dluc’s designs made clear that each of the massive stone lintels of the ring of sarsens was to be slightly curved so that together they would form a perfect circle. How could such huge stones be transformed – thirty of them – into identical blocks each shaped with such precision?
“You must find a way,” they told him.
Nooma shook his head slowly. “I shall certainly be led to the altar stone,” he thought sadly.
But there was nothing he could do. The priests could not be refused. Somehow, he must devise a way to build this huge new henge.
“I should need fifty masons to work under me,” he said finally. “And as for labourers . . .” He tried to calculate the size of the army of men that would be needed to haul such enormous stones. For each sarsen would weigh up to thirty-five tons – the largest half as much again – and would have to be moved nearly twenty miles across the rolling high ground. “Why,” he exclaimed, “it would take five hundred men at least, and teams of oxen too.”
But the priests were unmoved by these astounding demands.
“You shall have all the men you need, and the oxen,” he was informed.
Nooma thought. The practical problems of organising such a force, of feeding and housing them would occupy much time. He could not do this and supervise the stone-working alone. “I shall need help to organise the men,” he said.
“Choose whom you wish.”
The little fellow considered.
“I should like Tark the riverman,” he said.
It was a good choice. No one on the five rivers was cleverer than Tark, the best known and most highly regarded of all the riverfolk. The riverfolk at Sarum were an extensive tribe, somewhat apart from the farmers, and mostly descended in one way or another from the crafty fishermen and hunters who had first inhabited the place millennia before. It was not uncommon to see mean, hard little faces and long toes which bore a remarkable similarity to those of Tep the hunter, along the riverbanks of any of the five rivers, as these people went about their business as trappers, fishermen and traders. Water rats they were often called by the Sarum people.
Tark was of this tribe, but a nobler specimen than most. Though he, too, had the long toes of the water rat, he was a tall, good-looking man with strong, rugged features, long black hair which he swept back, and a black beard which he kept meticulously trimmed and singed. His eyes, black as jet, could be hard when he was driving a bargain, but could also become gentle and luminous, especially when he sang, which he did in a fine, tuneful bass; and it was partly for this reason that he was well known from the trading post to the port to be popular with the women. Tark was an expert trader, with six boats and men of his own working under him. He was everywhere, even crossing the sea sometimes in search of slaves or special items that he knew would please Krona or the priests. Above all, he was wily in his dealing with the priests, always making himself useful to them, while at the same time seeing to it that each transaction was to his benefit. He liked the little mason, whom he found slightly absurd, admired his craftsmanship and had formed a kind of friendship with him, often letting him have small items from his river-trading which the mason would never have been clever enough to bargain for himself.
Nooma was sure that he would know how to organise the provisioning and quartering of his men, and he was right.
“You have a month to prepare,” the priests told the mason. “At the next new moon, work must begin.”
In the days that followed, Nooma found that his needs were more than supplied. The priests moved from house to house, picking young men whenever they were needed. Before the work was done, over a third of the adult male population would be engaged on the task at any one time. Under Tark’s direction, grain stores were built near the site from which the sarsens would be brought, and the work of felling trees, which would be used as rollers over which the huge stones could be moved, was begun.
By the end of the month, despite the huge size of the task before him, Nooma felt the first dawning of a new confidence. Encouraged by Tark, who was delighted by such an opportunity to make himself useful to the priests, he began to go about his great work with a new optimism and before the end of the month confided to the trader: “Perhaps, after all, it can be done.”
While the preparations were in hand, he also set his mind to the technical problems presented by the stones themselves: how were they to be handled, and above all, how were such cumbersome objects to be fitted together in so precise a design?
It was in this that Nooma showed a practical genius which amply justified the choice that the priests had made in putting the work under his hands.
For when he came to report to the priests at the end of the month, the little mason was brimming with suppressed excitement.
As he outlined his plans, jabbing the air with his stubby little fingers, he announced:
“We must cut the stones into their final shape before we move them.”
The priests were surprised. It had been assumed that the rough hewn rocks would be brought to the henge before they were shaped. But Nooma shook his head.
“First,” he explained, “it is foolish to move the sarsens before they are almost shaped, because they will be heavier. And second, if we cut and dress the stones at the henge, the mess will be enormous: thousands of stone chippings to carry away.”
“Then you mean to shape every stone of the temple a day’s journey away, carry the finished stones to the sacred ground and assemble them there?” One of the priests asked in astonishment.
He nodded calmly. “Why not?”
Next he produced his own drawings.
To produce the identically curved lintels he proposed to make a wooden block, along which each stone could be cut, and in order to fix them in place he had devised an ingenious solution.
“See,” he explained, “at the top of each upright we can make two tenons – these bumps – and on the underside of each lintel two matching sockets for the tenons to fit into.”
He pointed them out to the priests.
“They will be fitted into each other just as we do blocks of wood,” he explained. “And then,” he continued, “I can make tongue and groove joints at the end of the lintels so that each one slots into the next.”
“They will be solid,” the priest who had spoken before remarked.
“Solid!” the quiet little fellow suddenly burst out. “Why, each stone will be married to the next like husband to wife. The temple will be indestructible!” He was flushed with excitement.
It was from that moment that the priests knew the new temple of Stonehenge would be a masterpiece; and that night, when they gave Dluc an account of the mason’s plans, the High Priest was pleased.
If only the High Priest’s problems had been so easily resolved. For the question of Krona and his heir remained and as the months passed, it was only his faith in the sun god that kept him from despair: often it seemed to Dluc that they were labouring in a great darkness. At times it even appeared that the gods themselves were deliberately confusing them. A suitable bride had to be found: but where? The auguries had said that her head would be crowned with gold – but what did it mean? It might only signify that she would be the daughter of a chief, for it was often the custom for such girls to wear a circlet of gold in their hair when they were married; but this explanation did not satisfy him: he was sure that the augury meant something more. And indeed, though messengers were sent to chiefs all over the island, they failed to find any bride who was suitable.
It was then that one of the older priests suggested:
“The land of Ireland is called the golden because of its fine jewellers. Perhaps the girl is to come from there.”
And since the searches on the island had been useless, it was decided to send a priest to that distant western land to see if he could find a bride there. But it was a long and dangerous journey and Dluc was uncertain whom to send until a young priest named Omnic, tall and stately and with the fire of courage and dedication in his eyes stood up and cried:
“Send me, High Priest. I shall be safe, for I know that this journey is the will of the sun god.”
So Dluc sacrificed two rams, Krona gave him fine gifts, and three days later, in a small curragh, he set out from the harbour with only three men to accompany him.
He was gone for two years.
During this time, while Nooma and his masons cut ten of the great sarsens, Krona’s spirit became less sad: the haggard look left his face, he made several visits to see the work progressing, and he even began to hunt again. He resumed his life with Ina. What must she feel, Dluc sometimes wondered, sharing Krona’s bed once again, yet knowing it must be for only a short time, until his new bride should arrive? At first he had noticed an air of contentment about her; the lines in her still handsome face had seemed to be smoothed; but as the months passed, and Krona started to look forward to the approach of his new bride with more and more obvious impatience, the priest observed new lines, of irritation, around her mouth and as time wore on, not only her face, but her whole body seemed to take on an air of resignation.
Once, when he had asked her what she thought of the chief’s health, she had given him a sad smile: “Krona is well. But let his new bride come soon.”
And indeed, Krona’s impatience became increasingly clear. When they discussed the future, his eyes were concerned and sometimes he would take the High Priest by the arm and say:
“Sacrifice another ram to the sun god, so that Omnic may return soon with my bride.”
Each time Dluc did as he asked, and always he reminded him:
“Do not despair. We are building the new temple. If we obey the gods, they will keep their promise.”
But Krona was still fearful.
“Tell the masons to work quickly,” he urged. “Time is passing and soon I shall be old.”
They were anxious years. To the High Priest they seemed to be long periods of darkness, pierced through occasionally with rays of hope: like the cloudy days interspersed with sunshine that were such a feature of the high ground in the spring and autumn of each year.
At the sarsens’ quarry the work continued all year round, only halting when the weather made it impossible to continue.
It was a strange place. It lay on an empty tract of downland, and, properly speaking, it was not a quarry at all. For the huge sarsen boulders from which the henge was to be made were not buried under the ground, but lay on the surface – hundreds of long, low humps of rock, rising only a few feet above the ground – so that from a distance it looked as if the landscape was covered by a flock of motionless, giant grey sheep.
Never had Nooma been busier: his squat form bustled everywhere in a heavy leather apron, his hair full of dust; but he had about him now an air of quiet authority and his word was never questioned as he showed the men how to cut and shape the huge rocks.
Discipline was strict. The men working at the quarry or felling trees on the ridges were kept in camps for months at a time. At the great festivals of the year, the summer and winter solstices and the spring and autumn equinoxes, the priests ordered Tark to bring slave girls to the camp, and the best workers were rewarded with them for two days, after which their work began again. At such times, Tark had always seen to it that Nooma had the pick of them.
The workers on the henge who were not already married were forbidden by the priests to take a wife; but in the second year, as a reward for his services, Nooma was told that he might do so.
This posed the mason with a problem. “I have no time to look for a wife,” he muttered as he surveyed the busy scene around him. Yet the thought of it excited him. Accordingly, one spring morning, he walked down to the trading post to consult his friend Tark.
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