Spiral: Book One of the Spiral in Time (33 page)

NIGHTHAWKING

June 14, 2006

The cellphone on his belt buzzed, and Ian quickly put it on vibrate; he wanted no sounds to give him away. Perfect, he thought as he pulled up in his VW van. He cut the engine and lights and drifted to a stop on the narrow, farm road, then sat for a few minutes listening to see if anyone had heard him. He didn’t want an irate farmer coming after him with a shotgun.

This wheat field was just over the border in Oxfordshire and freshly planted. He had watched this field for weeks, waiting for just this moment. The farmer’s plowing loosened up the soil making Ian’s work easier, and he needed some money fast.

Oxfordshire was always a good hunting ground for a nighthawk. The Romans had built many villas here, and the soil was rich in undiscovered artifacts. He found something almost every time he made the drive. It was late at night and no lights showed in the distant farmhouse, the only sound the nearby hum of the highway.

He quietly opened the sliding door to the van and then carefully lifted out his old, reliable Garrett Ace 350 metal detector. It had a magic touch: he always found something with it. With his headphones on, he started walking in a systematic scan of the field. He swung the detector in a three-foot arc in front of him. The LED screen on the detector would show any metal object twelve inches or more below the surface. The headphones gave out little beeps as he passed over pieces too small to show on the screen, usually coins or tiny metal pieces, like a button. And every time it beeped, it reminded him of a cash register.

Nighthawking used to be enough to keep him in money to buy the pills he needed, but now OxyContin cost more. A lot more. And he kept needing more of the pills. Soon he would need to try something different and cheaper, like cocaine. He popped a pill into his mouth. His mouth worked slowly as he walked the field, giving the metal detector a monotonous swing—three feet over and three feet back, all the while his tongue sucked off the sweet coating on the pill until the coating was all gone. Then he put the pill in the small, orange plastic container with a white snap on lid that held the other pills he had sucked clean. Five of them. Enough for the morning.

When he got home he would put them in his pill crusher and grind them into a fine powder—pure OxyContin. He liked it this way; it was cleaner. You knew what you were taking. One snort at a time, he lived his life from a line of white powder laid on a mirror so he didn’t lose a speck of the precious white powder. An opiate and pain killer, it gave him a sense of euphoria. And it was quick. He felt happy and high, as if he could do anything and it would be alright. The only problem was it took more and more to get that feeling.

Just then the metal detector beeped in his earphones. Something lay hidden below the newly planted wheat. The soil smelled like rotted leaves and damp earth after a rain. He dug into the soft ground about twenty inches and struck something hard. The farmer’s ploughing had helped. Carefully, he uncovered a small, broken pot full of coins. Some rich Roman hiding his wealth. Bits of gold flashed under his pinpoint flashlight—gold never tarnished. He took a cleaning cloth out of his pocket, rubbed the soil from another piece, and thought it might be a silver denarius. A good night’s work! He stuffed them into plastic bags. He’d clean them later.

He was impatient, jumpy. That was it for tonight. Coins were the easiest to sell. Usually no questions about provenance. The head or symbol was what mattered and lots of coin collectors just wanted to hold a piece of the past in their palms. Even the most common Roman coins found easy buyers. But he would come back again to this field. Finding so many coins so quickly usually meant there was more to be discovered.

As a special treat, he chewed and swallowed one of the OxyContin pills. The effect was slower than snorting, but would soon give him a pleasant buzz, and he had a long drive ahead.

The cellphone on his belt vibrated again. He looked down. Someone was calling on his private line. He opened the clam shell and looked at the code name displayed. Lord Dorset! His lucky night. It was money calling. Lord Dorset only called when there was something urgently needed, and he always paid well. Ian took a big slug from a can of beer in the van and listened intently to Lord Dorset’s voice and instructions.

At the end, his lordship just hung up without any niceties like saying goodbye. Ian sat in the van waiting for the OxyContin to start working, and thought about the very one-sided conversation he had just finished. So Conan was not Lord Dorset’s golden boy anymore, and Ian’s job was to spy on him. And there was another easier job: to search through all the finds from the burial chamber for some hidden piece of papyrus. Lord Dorset mentioned a generous, monthly stipend. Ian slipped the VW into neutral and turned the engine on. It was a long ride home, but he already felt better.

STONEHENGE

The Longest Day and the Shortest Night

June 20, 2006

More rain. Nicholas Greenwood looked outside the Neurological Intensive Care waiting room window. When it rained in London, the city lost its glamour and always seemed grim and dirty. Not like in the country at Tavistock, where rain meant life and made things grow. A gift in the country, a curse in the city.

Tonight would be a disaster for the Druids at Stonehenge. The television hanging from a corner in the waiting room quietly gave the weather report: increasing rain and cloud cover. No way to see the sun rise tomorrow at Stonehenge. It would take a miracle, one forecaster said, and laughed. Miracles were the stuff of fiction and modern-day reporters made light of the pagans and Druid beliefs. Most of them treated the Summer Solstice like a giant, hedonistic party.

Nicholas knew how much this ages-old ritual meant to many Druids he knew. Mick Aston would be there, leading his group of Druids. All kinds of people believed in the symbolism of welcoming the returning sun: farmers, teachers, clerks, and homemakers—young and old alike. There was something primal in the need to observe this coming dawn, this summer equinox.

He was not at Stonehenge with his friends, but here, keeping watch for Sir Aubrey over a young woman close to death. Germaine O’Neill lay in a hospital room down the hall, linked to an array of blinking monitors. How they even got her out of the burial chamber cave-in was a mystery to Nicholas. At least she was alive—for now.

Sir Aubrey lay in his own hospital room two floors away, recuperating from a mild heart attack. There had been no one to watch over Germaine O’Neill until Nicholas volunteered.

Every three hours he was allowed to go into the intensive care unit and see her. The room was always bright; a shock after Sir Aubrey’s dimly lighted room. He didn’t know what to say, so simply gave her an update on Sir Aubrey, even if she didn’t respond.

Her face was white. They called her hair red, but it was more like the deep orange color he had once seen of ripe apricots, fallen to the ground in an orchard in Provence. He wondered if her hair would smell sweet. The nurses had braided it back from her face in two thick plaits. He had been fascinated with Germaine O’Neill at the conference and felt he knew her, even though they had just met. He liked her bright curiosity and strong opinions, and something else, he couldn’t put his finger on.

He looked out the window, watching a dismal dawn break, the darkness slowly turning gray and then a pale, nondescript color. One glance at Germaine and he knew nothing was resolved. She lay motionless, vulnerable, and her life still hung in balance. He closed his eyes in a prayer to gods old and new. And in his memory, the sweet scent of apricots drifted.

Mick Aston adjusted his soggy robe and then led the members of
The Ancient Order of the British Druids
forward in a solemn procession of all the Druid groups, ending in the inner circle of Stonehenge. It was the Summer Solstice—the longest day and the shortest night. A time to rejoice, to raise the gods with a joyous roar at first sight of the sun.

Not for Mick. He was damp and miserable. Bone cold and windy, it had rained off and on all night, the sky still heavy with low clouds and sheets of fine mist drifted like veils. Not a good portent for a dawn sighting. And yet, cold or not, he and all the others waited to see the returning sun rise in this place sacred to all Druids, where the cremated bones of the ancestors were hidden and buried and the ancient ones had labored to bring those massive Sarsen stones. Most were upright in a large circle, a henge, but a few lay fallen on the ground like stone gods killed in a mighty battle. From where did they come, he often wondered? Salisbury Plain had not a stone in sight for miles.

The standing Sarsens were still concealed, only vague outlines poking up through the ground mist against the dark sky. Time passed slowly in the dim light, all eyes waiting for the second the sun crested over the heel stone and cast its light straight through the henge to the altar stones. That only happened on this one day. For the ancients, it was a potent sign: the barley would grow, the corn would stand tall like a banner, and women’s bodies would ripen and swell with new life. They would be saved from starvation and death in the coming year.

It was still a place of great power; Mick felt it all around him. The strength of all his Druid ancestors was here.

Here is the dawn, the light. Live! Live!

They chanted and sang the words over and over, an ancient greeting from mankind, surely born out of fear that the sun might not stay and make fertile the earth with new life.

Mick stood with a heavy heart. New life, he sighed, when all his thoughts were with the dying. They had finally buried the old Grand Druid, Merlin Fitzwater, in a secluded grove close to Winterbourne Abbas where Merlin grew up. Now the stone that dragged on Mick’s heart was Jemmy. Crushed and broken, the doctors said he would never mend, and each breath was thought to be his last.

Mick was tired. They had arrived at three in the morning to the blinding lights of the car park and the raucous behavior of the crowd of 17,000. The waiting for dawn was not quiet.

Lit by torchlight, an irreverent crowd with bizarrely painted faces, dangling feathers, bells, and beads, clutching blankets and trailing robes, had danced and made music all night, while waiting to see the sun rise on the first day of summer. Drums pounded in imagined rhythms of prehistoric tribes. Even the Hare Krishna’s were there in their orange robes and flowers, singing and blessing everyone who came near. With all the drinking and illegal smoking, it did not seem like a sacred occasion—at least to Mick. He didn’t like it, but thought they probably did that back in the Druids’ time too. He tried not to breath too deeply of the cannabis-laden air.

Standing off to one side, the Druids kept to themselves, holding sacred ceremonies to honor the four elements of life: the air to breath, blessed earth to sustain all, water to drink, and fire for warmth. Peaceably chanting of new life and dawn.

English Heritage had published detailed guidelines with rules for behavior and helpful hints, such as “please help to create a peaceful occasion.” Mick wondered about that. The car park held van loads of police, just waiting to leap into the crowd. Someone cried out and pointed. There, up on the lintel between two giant Sarsen stones, a naked man danced and waved his arms, flashing a peace sign with his fingers. There was no sacred peace here.

Out of the corner of his eye Mick watched Ian slip away from the Druid brotherhood and head off somewhere. He didn’t trust him but could not put his finger on the cause. Robbie trailed after Ian like a faithful dog with his master.

Mick glanced at his watch. It was already an hour past sunrise. He raised his eyes to the opening in the stone circle and all he saw were rain clouds drifting across the horizon. No sun rose to warm the coming year.

Mick’s heart twisted in fear. Jemmy! His throat tightened as he held back the tears. He wanted to weep. He had hoped—but there was no new life, no miracle this year. With a deep sigh he led the brotherhood away from the henge. They were almost back at the car park when there was a shout from the crowd behind them. They stopped and looked back at Stonehenge, towards the eastern sky. The wind had blown some of the clouds away and glimpses of a clear, blue sky slipped through the gray gloom. Another moment and the sky cleared. Through the dark stones came the bright sun, a little high, but rosy and warm. A great shout went up from the crowd.