“No buts. I’m not driving you back and the buses have finished.”
“We could walk.” But Vetch smiled as he said it, and added, “I wonder you want me here, Father.”
Mac leaned forward. “Tell me about yourself. Explain to me who you are and what you want. This boy is my godson, and more than that, his immortal soul is in my care. I won’t let any harm come to him. And no New Age bullshit, please.”
Rob stared. Vetch just laughed. He drew in a breath, but Mac held up a hand, went to his sideboard and took out a glass. He poured red wine into it and came back. “Drink that first. You look washed out.”
Vetch sipped it. When he spoke his voice was stronger; he looked out at the downs. “What I am or who I am is difficult to explain. I’ve had many names and lived in many times and places, but my real home is not here. It’s in a place I call the Unworld, or Annwn. Another dimension, another reality. A wood of dreams, a landscape of sinew and stone. You might call it the Imagination.”
Mac leaned back and spread his feet out. He looked resigned but said nothing.
“I was drawn here now because of the Darkhenge. It was built about four thousand years ago, by the men and women of this place, in a certain season when the stars were correct and the harvest was in. I watched them build it.”
Over the top of the glass his gray eyes met Mac’s; the priest stared back, expressionless. “That must have been fascinating.”
Vetch smiled. “Oh, it was.”
“You didn’t help?”
“I sang to them. Sang of the Cauldron, and the trees. When the great oak was stripped of its bark I chanted the poet’s secret words.”
Mac took out a cigarette. “Go on.”
“The henge is a ritual enclosure, something like a church, something like a healing place. Those who have the knowledge and the ability may use it as a gateway. I’ve been here too long; my existence is thinning, being eaten away. It’s time I went home. The henge is my way back.”
“And Chloe?”
Vetch sighed. Then he said, “I had hoped I could find her, but she’s moving deeper in. She’s trapped in there, in herself, her memories, her fears. If I get back, I’ll look for her. I can’t promise anything though. I think it’s possible she’s being held against her will.”
Mac glanced at the clock as it struck eleven, but he wasn’t seeing it. He had that look Rob recognized from painting his portrait, that focused, formidable hardness. “You seem to know a great deal about this.”
“Knowledge is my business.”
“As a poet.”
Vetch gave his quiet smile. “As one of the Cauldron-born, yes.”
“A druid.”
“Perhaps bard is a better word. Perhaps priest.”
Mac scowled. “I should throw you out now.”
“I don’t think you will, Father. Because time is short. Now the authorities know about the henge they will act quickly; it will be uncovered and probably removed for conservation. Has Rob told you about the central deposit?”
“No.”
“It’s a tree.” Vetch put the glass down and leaned forward. All at once he seemed tense with excitement. “A great oak. It was a holy tree, a shaman’s tree, lightning-struck, bone white. It was selected with great care; a whole tribe working on uprooting it for months, at special times and seasons, digging around it, easing it out entire, a vast tangle of roots. Once they had dragged it to the site, they stripped it of bark, trimmed the trunk and inverted it. It has become an axis, a pole linking this place and the Unworld. It leads inside. To the world within.”
Mac blew out smoke and glanced at Rob. “Is that so.”
He was elaborately sarcastic, but Vetch was watching him carefully. “I see you also know about this.”
Mac looked back at him hard. “You may well be eternal. But so am I. So are all of us. And yes, I know there are other worlds. Places outside this reality. We call one of them Hell.”
Vetch looked down, fingering the string of the bag that trailed from his pocket. “She’s not there,” he said softly. “You don’t think that.”
To Rob’s surprise Mac snorted out a laugh. “No,” he said. “She’s not there.”
“Nor do I come from such a place.”
Mac stood up, a great upheaval from the leather chair. “No, my son,” he said, looking down. “I don’t think you do. Judging by the remnants of your accent, I’d say you came from Wales.”
By eleven o’clock next morning the tree roots were uncovered.
Pausing a moment in the welter of mud and midge-haunted heat, Rob put a hand out and rubbed the smooth black bole, the hollow center. Already Marcus had begun to speculate: the hollow had held water, or blood, or a sacred object, or a corpse to be picked clean by hawks.
It had been photographed from every angle; Rob had a longing to draw it, to involve himself with that tangle of seamed and smooth wooden threads, but there wasn’t time.
Everything had speeded up. For a start, Clare was no longer in charge. A bearded man in battered wellingtons and a blue waterproof coat over his suit was conducting a hurried press conference at the entrance to the metal fence; his name was Warrington and he was from English Heritage. Other new people came and went, talking, photographing, making excited comments. Clare was around; she had spent most of the morning in the trailer being interviewed on the phone, and now he saw her talking volubly at some camera. It seemed she was getting her say in, at least.
When she finished, she hurried over, looking pleased.
“Lab’s available for the dendro and the carbon dating,” she said to Jimmy, over Rob’s head. “Take the samples this afternoon.”
When she was gone, Rob said, “Dendro…?”
“Chronology. Tree rings. You count them and work out the date the tree was cut.”
Rob cleaned a scrape of soil. Another inch of the tree’s side emerged into daylight. Perhaps he was the first to see it for thousands of years. Then a thought pierced like a cold sliver into his mind. He looked up. “How?”
“What?”
“How do you count them? The thing’s still in the ground…”
“Not for long. But I’ll cut a slice out.”
Appalled, Rob said, “Cut?”
Jimmy grinned. “With a chain saw, clever boy.”
Rob didn’t move, chilled with fear. When he looked back down, he barely saw what he was doing.
“She’s linked to the henge,” Vetch had said that morning on the bus. “The henge is the way to her, and by the ogham twigs I may have made the connection even stronger.” He had sounded anxious. Maybe this was what he had feared. It was the only way to Chloe. And if they took a chain saw to it …
Twelve o’clock was the lunch break and it was five to now. Suddenly Rob scraped the trowel clean, dumped it in the bucket and raced for his bike, pushing it past the parked cars and swinging on. Clare came out and yelled after him, “Don’t be late! This afternoon is crucial!” He waved back, wobbling off over the white chalk ruts, swerving to avoid a tractor coming around. He rode hard, the wind in his face, the muscles in his calves tight.
A chain saw! He had to find Vetch!
Cutting through the lanes, he turned onto the A4 and struck recklessly across it, almost hit by a truck blaring past. Across the road he whipped into the lane to Avebury.
Whizzing past Falkner’s Circle, where Chloe had fallen, he thought briefly again about the girl on the horse he had seen there, and glanced up the track by the hedge, but it was overgrown and silent.
“Be careful!” he hissed aloud. “Wherever you are, Chloe, be careful!”
The camp under the beech trees was quiet. Smoke rose from a fire and a little girl played in some mud. The woman he remembered as Megan came out of a tent and stared as the bike slewed over.
“Where’s Vetch?” Rob gasped.
“At the Cove. They’re waiting for you.”
He stared, then turned and ran back inside the vast embankment, clicking open the gate on the right and squeezing into the long grass of the northeast quadrant of the massive Avebury ring. The grass was ankle high and tussocky, chewed by sheep who stared and wandered away from him, unbothered by people. Few stones still stood here, and visitors usually walked along the high bank looking down, the white trails of erosion clear in the chalk.