Triskellion (30 page)

T
om Hatcham paced up and down behind the bar, continuing to dispense drinks with the same ill-humour as he had done since Hilary Wing’s exit. Though the immediate shock and hubbub had died down, Wing’s words still gnawed away at Hatcham.

He knew he should have gone with him.

“Hilary was right.” Hatcham raised his voice to address everyone in the bar. “What we’ve got here is far too precious to lose. Not to any TV company and certainly not because of a pair of American brats. I don’t know about all this legend stuff and all the supernatural mumbo jumbo, but I
do
know that the life we’ve got here is worth protecting, and that somewhere along the line it’s to do with that gold thing.”

There were nods and grunts from assorted tables and someone shouted, “Go on, Tom!”

“It’s our duty to make sure these people don’t nick our village treasures. So I’m going after them.” He paused, looked
from group to group. “Who’s coming?”

A murmur went round the bar, and finally the commodore spoke, summoning every last ounce of his former authority.

“I appreciate the sentiment, Tom, but don’t let my son fool you. Hilary’s not out to preserve anything. I’m afraid … I’m
ashamed
to say, that Hilary is in it for Hilary. He thinks that by commandeering this artefact, he will assume some … power over us all. But he’s an idiot. He has no more idea than I do what the Triskellion is capable of.”

Hatcham hesitated, then spoke. “With respect, commodore, whatever it is this thing does, we do know that if those kids have got it, it’s in the wrong hands, and we need to try and get it back.” The landlord grabbed his jacket from behind the bar and marched over to the door.

The commodore could do nothing but watch helplessly.

“Well?” Hatcham said, looking back at the expectant faces. A table comprising half the village cricket team, who were now quite drunk, stood on their feet.

“We’re coming,” said the burly fast bowler.

He was followed by three or four others in the team, by most of the parish council, men and women, by the dominos players and by the Bacon brothers, who had been lurking near the fruit machine in the back bar.

The group of a dozen or so, slapping each other’s backs and egging each other on, staggered out into the night air, and off across the green, crossing the path that Rachel and Adam Newman had taken just moments before.

*  *  *

The pale rectangles of light from the windows guided Rachel and Adam across the graveyard towards the church hall. Dalton and the crew had moved out of The Star the night before and his BMW was parked outside, silhouetted against the purple night sky.

Rachel and Adam had dragged their heels across the wet grass of the churchyard. Its scattered and chipped gravestones were spooky at any time of day, but the voice in Rachel’s head had urged her on.

Gabriel’s voice – rhythmic, soothing, persuasive – had kept her calm.

“Take it, Rachel. Don’t be afraid. You have the right…”

As they approached the 4 × 4, stacked high with Dalton’s equipment, the door of the hall crashed open, casting a yellow wedge of light across their path. Masked by the shadow of the car, Rachel and Adam ducked behind the wheel and saw Dalton come charging out of the hall, quickly followed by Laura Sullivan. They were arguing, and as they approached the car, their voices became clearer.

“No way,” Dalton shouted. “We need to sit on this thing for a few more days. I just need to get back up to town for a day or two, that’s all, so I can manage the announcement properly. Just think of the news conference with all the major channels there. Just think of the headlines when I tell the world what I’ve found.”

“Chris, this isn’t all about
you
,” Laura snapped. “This isn’t
about making news stories. It’s far more important than that. Look … it’s not a news conference we need, it’s a controlled lab. Somewhere out of the way of prying eyes, with all the equipment we need, so we can make sure exactly what we’ve got on our hands here.
Then
we can decide whether we let anyone know what we’ve got. I mean … it might be safer
not
to, you know?”

“Are you joking?” Dalton spluttered. “This will make our careers.”

“And what about the golden blade?” Laura’s tone was calmer, more conciliatory. “Who are you going to hand that over to?”

“Who said anything about handing it over?” Dalton said. “Listen, haven’t you ever had a present so good, so completely wonderful, that you just wanted to lock yourself away in a room all on your own and look at it?”

Laura shook her head and tried to speak, but Dalton cut her off.

“Well, this is
my
present. I found it. It’s up to me what I do with it. It’s a gift.” Dalton gave Laura a smug smile as though there was nothing further to be said on the subject. “Now lock the bloody door and let’s go. See if we can get a drink before the pub closes…”

As Dalton walked to the car, Rachel and Adam ducked down a little further. They watched as Laura reached into her pocket for the keys and then froze, peering towards the back of the car as though she had caught their movement in
the shadows. As though she were looking right at them.

“Hurry up,” Dalton shouted, firing up the ignition.

Laura shouted over the engine roar. “You’re bloody mad. It’s not ours to keep…”

Dalton ignored her and revved the engine.

Laura turned and looked towards the door of the church hall. She seemed to hesitate for a few seconds before turning back, then running to the car and climbing into the passenger seat. The car churned up clods of mud and grass as it lurched quickly away across the gravel of the church path.

Rachel and Adam spluttered, fanning away the exhaust vapour that had engulfed them as Dalton and Laura had driven off. As the rear lights of the car faded past the church, they took the few remaining steps up towards the darkened church hall.

Adam pushed open the door. “She forgot to lock it,” he said.

“Maybe.” Rachel remembered the look on Laura’s face and couldn’t help wondering if she’d left the door unlocked deliberately, for them.

Then Adam turned. “What the hell’s
that
?”

The noise was coming from the woods: a terrible clattering and shouting that beat like the heart of something dark and dreadful as it drifted across the fields. Looking, Rachel and Adam could see the golden aura from a large fire rising above the trees.

They felt the hair on their necks prickle.

“Come on,” Rachel said. She pushed past her brother and stepped into the chill of the church hall.

T
he Green Men chopped fresh wood every day and there was plenty to keep the fire burning. To stoke up its heat and its roar. The flames rose high above the treetops, and sparks crackled up in their wake: bright for just a second or two against the dark sky, before floating gently back towards the earth, like dying fireflies.

The huge fire blazed in the middle of a circle ten metres across; a ring of battered vehicles, of old oil drums, and of the Green Men themselves who walked in step round its perimeter, beating out a slow and steady rhythm as they waited for their leader.

Wearing dirty furs and strips of ragged leather, their headpieces decorated with skulls and feathers, they beat with logs and metal pipes against the drums and tree stumps. Many of their faces had been blackened with earth, and their mouths, when they opened them to chant, were red and wet like animal guts in the glow from the fire.

“Tri-skellion… Tri-skellion…”

The rhythm got faster and the noise more intense as Hilary Wing moved slowly into the circle. His face was a mask, the blue eyes blazing in the firelight and standing in contrast to the black-painted flesh round them. He walked once round the fire, moving in the opposite direction to his men, laying a hand on the shoulder of each before he climbed on to the roof of his camouflaged camper van and held up his arms.

He waited for silence.

“We came together to celebrate earth and sea and sky,” he said. “And to keep the ancient ways alive. We gather in these woods because we understand that the present is shaped by the past and because those that forget this have sacrificed their future. We are the memory of this place, and we are its
hope
.”

The Green Men banged against the drums to show their approval, urging Hilary Wing on. He acknowledged their enthusiasm, nodding like a triumphant politician as he waited for the racket to subside.

“We are its only hope because only we have understood the threat to its existence. The attack on everything that makes us as we are, that makes our lives here so precious. We are its only hope because, ultimately, we are the only ones with the guts to fight back…”

There was more noise from the circle of figures that hung on every word, still as standing stones. And now the chanting began again; quieter this time, then growing louder as the
excitement increased. The voices of the Green Men were a chorus of roars and grunted urges that lifted the words of Hilary Wing higher even than the flames.

“Tri-skellion … Tri-skellion … Tri-skellion…”

“Tonight is the most important night of our lives. Tonight, those that condemn what we do, that see us as little more than a joke, will have cause to thank us, and to regret their ignorant contempt. We have put on bells and danced on their village green. We have smiled and posed for pictures with children and with grinning visitors. We have played our parts very nicely, but tonight we will show those that dare to steal from us that we can fight as fiercely as any animal in these woods when it is threatened.”

The chanting and the pounding grew louder still, and a small group peeled off from the circle and walked across the clearing to the great uprooted tree on its outskirts.

The small deer that was lashed to the trunk writhed against its bonds as they approached. Struggled in vain as one of them drew out a knife and went about his work.

When it was over, the creature was laid on a thick branch decorated with leaves and creeping ivy, and carried across to Hilary Wing as the noise from the Green Men rose to fever pitch.

Wing bent down to stroke the neck of the slaughtered deer, then raised himself up again and painted his face in streaks of the animal’s bright blood. Once more complete again, the circle roared its approval and, holding his arms
aloft, Hilary Wing was forced to scream to make himself heard.

“Green Men have gathered on this spot for centuries, and tonight we must embrace their spirits and the spirits of the creatures they have chosen to live alongside. We must harness their strength and their passion and their rage. We must take back what is ours by right.”

On the fire, a huge log erupted into a cascade of sparks, as though the spirits that Hilary Wing believed still moved through the woods were signalling their support.

“We have danced and smiled enough,” Wing said. “We are the guardians of the Triskellion – the chalk circle, the village and yes, even the amulet itself. We have a duty to defend ourselves, to defend what we stand for. Now … it is time to fight!”

And the Green Men cheered as Hilary Wing jumped down from the camper van; flailed their arms like wild animals when he ran across to a huge motorbike and started it up.

As the engine roared into life, a vast flock of crows exploded from the trees above him and rose into the glowing night sky like a black cloud as if they had been generated by the flames. The birds drifted, cawing as though they were in terrible pain, and following the procession of cars and trucks that trailed after Hilary Wing, out of the woods and towards the village.

*  *  *

In the all but deserted lounge of The Star, Commodore Wing limped behind the bar and reached for the bottle of red wine that Tom Hatcham had opened for Hilary earlier.

“Don’t, Gerry.” From her wheelchair at the corner table, Celia Root reached a hand out towards him. “Please don’t drink any more…”

The commodore put the bottle down, moved back towards the table. “You’re right. Drinking isn’t going to help.” He dropped into a chair next to Celia Root and let out a long and desperate sigh. “Nothing is going to help.”

“What have we done?” she said.

“You know very well what we did.”

She shook her head. “No, I mean, why is it so
bad
? It didn’t feel bad, at the time, did it?”

The commodore looked across at her and smiled. He had no need to answer that question.

“Anyway, isn’t it all just a silly superstition?”

“Not silly…”

“Like something out of an old horror film?”

Commodore Wing knew that there was a lot more to it than that. Though he couldn’t be sure
exactly
what would happen if the Triskellion were made whole again, he knew that it was what the boy Gabriel had come for.

He knew who Gabriel was.

And he knew why Celia Root’s grandchildren … his
own
grandchildren would be the ones to find it.

It was a story he had heard from his own father, as his
father had heard it from his father before him: one that had been passed down through generations of Wings, going as far back as it was possible to go.