SWORD OF TULKAR (4 page)

Memories

A stone

standing in a field

with a star crowning its tip

remembers.

The moon,

sailing over a barrow

on a bleak Scottish moor

recalls.

The sun,

blazing by the Heelstone

on Midsummer’s Morn

has memories

Of ancient astronomers

charting sun and moon

in times we call

uncivilised.

On Salisbury Plain the cold rains weep

while in the mounds the old ones sleep,

and across the Plain the sad wind shrills

singing dirges to the hollow hills.

To those who slumber deep below

the forgotten folk of long ago,

who wandered field, fen and wood

ere iron was forged or castle stood.

Small dark farmers, gold-clad kings,

users of the lintelled temple’s rings.

A folk who have by time been slain

and lie buried neath the hills of Salisbury Plain.

We are the People of the Hills!

Long eons ago we ruled this land,

We built long mounds to house our dead

And raised the mighty stones that stand

Unto eternity, their grey faces

Enigmatic to all after-coming races.

We are the People of the Hills!

Little and dark, with our fine flint tools,

The Outsiders name us spirits and faeries—

Oh, those poor, poor ignorant fools!

Aye, years will come and years will fade

But long will the Land bear the things we’ve made.

We are the People of the Hills!

Small and weak with our bones all bent,

And our children dying in the cold;

Yet we first farmed; aye, the earth we rent,

For THEM to steal for their own;

That and the camp and the standing stone!

We are the people of the Hills!

Outsiders brought bronze, stronger than stone;

Made us raise new temples to their Gods,

While our folk withered; flesh clung to bone.

But when outsiders and bronze weapons are gone

The People of the Hills shall still live on.

Cave of the Sun

Morning clouds vanish from the hills

Cold stars sink and the sky grows bright.

Red as a wound, the sunrise comes

Pouring Midwinter’s light over green fields.

Dark and silent, the stone hill lies sleeping

In shadows deep and curling mister,

Its portals open to the eastern skies

A mouth to be kissed by the morning sun.

A finger of light stabs through the dark,

Running down a passage old as time,

Tracing whorls and spirals on the walls,

Where none now remember the carver’s name.

At hill’s heart, in the darkest close

The Cave of the Sun grows bright as day.

Old spirits wake; the ghosts of men

Long passed away; who toiled of old.

They leap in the light, hands held aloft,

Beneath the watchful spiral eyes

Of the Mother who guards the Dead

Ere they rise in the new morning.

The sun moves West; the lightbeam fails,

Cut off as if by a wizard’s blade.

The spirits slip back into night,

To long rest bade by the passing Sun.

Hill of the Witch

Cold stone bowl upon a hill,

cracked by time and bitter frost,

exposure to a thousand winter’s nights

and the ungentle hands of men.

On the Hill of the Witch

the old stones lie fallen,

carven faces staring blindly at the Sun

with spiral-eyes once meant

to gaze only on the ancient dead.

The rain weeps like woman’s tears

filling the cracked shell of the bowl,

washing last traces of funeral ash

from the thick green layers

of spotted lichen and dew-drenched moss.

The wind wails out a mourning dirge;

on its breath the bean-sidhe’s cries,

echoing the keening of a forgotten folk

at the mouth of the tomb

on the Hill of the Witch.

High on a hill it stood, overlooking the land.

For four thousand years, its grey, eyeless face had gazed out over the valley. From a distance it bore the semblance of a hunched, hooded man on one side; on the other it was a warning finger, a fang of stone rising from the green gums of the downland around it.
No one knew who put it there, or why. Only that it had always been.

Then the newcomer came, to the farm below the hill. A man narrow eyed and narrow-minded, who saw nothing beyond his pay at the end of the day. The beautiful lands around him meant nothing --'Just boring trees and rises!' he'd quip, and the ancient stone even less: 'Stupid old thing; can't see the fuss. Just a rock! Should be knocked down so we can build there!"

And so, despite the laws that protected such old stones, one night he crept out to the standing stone, shrouded in darkness. He carried wood and petrol for the burning. He knew how to get rid of the unwelcome long-time tenant on his land...In the morning, he'd make a show of dismay and blame the 'vandals'...the bratty teenagers from the nearby town, up to their boozing and partying. A pity, a shame...but he'd put the empty spot to good use...something better for the town than some crusty monument.

He approached the stone, feet swishing on the dewy grass. It loomed black against the sky, sturdy, solid, eternal. The wind suddenly dropped; it felt very still and very cold on the bare hillside.

Man stared at stone.

Maybe the stone, which looked in some lights like a hunched man, stared back with eyes of granite.

The farmer cursed. He flung down his kindling and poured petrol on it. He lit a long match, hurled it on the petrol soaked wood and ran. Flames whooshed into the night.
It took a long time, but he kept the fire burning hot at the base of the stone. Eventually, he heard a crack, a groan, a screech like that of a tortured soul. The stone shifted in its age-old bed and began to lean to one side.

And then he saw something, revealed by the crater at the stone's foot. A bald skull. A shattered pot. Dead man's teeth glowing in the moonlight.

And, the glitter of gold.

The farmer cursed and tried to wriggle in to see. Gold! Gold! Treasure trove would earn him plenty! He chuckled, thinking how wise he had been to take down this ancient blot on the landscape.

Trying to avoid the flames, he stretched out a hand for the brightly shining ornament, a lozenge-shaped breastplate. Ashes and sparks flew around him, half blinding him, burning the hairs in his nose.

His fingertips traced the cold, grave-chill surface and then he heard a sound. A familiar sound. One he had rejoiced to hear before, but which filled him with terror now.

The stone above was shrieking, groaning as its foundation failed and its base dissolved. With a roar it suddenly tumbled forward, striking him, driving him down into the revealed grave pit, burying him with the treasure he had craved.

In the morning, the police came. Vandals...kids from town they said, as the farmer had

thought they would. A shame.

A week later a business colleague reported the farmer missing. None mourned him much; he had no close family and fewer friends. He was known to have had dodgy financial dealings; many who had known him though he had run off abroad, to a new life in
South America.

On the hill, lying across the spot where it had once stood in wind and rain for a million nights, the ancient stone marker and its ancient burial kept its secrets

AUTHOR’S NOTES

‘SWORD OF TULKAR’ is based on a real life find in the cave of Heathery Burn near Co Durham, England (now sadly destroyed). In the 19
th
century the remnants of a bronze age smithy was found, including bronze cauldrons and weaponry. Amidst this assemblage was also found human remains, which appear to have been interred while the cave was in full use. The inclusion of human bones into the foundation of dwelling places is a very old tradition, also found in the British Isles in places such as Skara Brae and at the recently discovered Cladh Hallan, where not only was there some evidence of mummification but also, as it turns out, the ‘mummy’ was assembled from several different people. The insertion of human skeletons may have several reasons, but the most plausible is probably that they were ancestral bones, used to mark territory and space, just like those in barrows which appear conspicuously on rises in the landscape and may have signified tribal boundaries. The spirits associated with the dead also probably may have been regarded as ‘house guardians’. Similar practices have been found in even older Neolithic sites such as at Catal Hoyuk in Turkey, where the people slept over the dead and the walls were painted with graphic scenes of excarnation.

The first draft of Tulkar was orig
inally written in the late 1980s, and although I have modified some of the dialogue and text, it still contains some of the ‘thinking’ of the era in regards to British prehistory—that there had been wave upon wave of violent invasion, each successive wave obliterating the culture and people before it (often violently). Now, of course, no archaeologist worth their salt would suggest this was the case; small amounts of migration from the continent did occur, but much of the change was cultural rather than genetic…and certainly the bronze and Neolithic people are our direct ancestors as surely as more recent migrants to these isles.

If you enjoy stories about this rather neglected era of prehistory, please take a glance at my full length novel ‘STONE LORD’ on Amazon. This is a retelling of the Arthurian legends but with a twist—it is set in Wessex in around 1900 BC, and Stonehenge is the Round Table. It will be followed by a sequel, ‘MOON LORD’ in May.

J.P. Reedman

stone-lord.blogspot.com