Spiral: Book One of the Spiral in Time (8 page)

Yellow and white honeysuckle vines climbed up the wall outside her window. A few sluggish bees made a low buzzing hum. Sounds of the Dorset countryside drifted in—a cowbell rang, horses neighed in the distance, a barn door creaked shut. The window faced east, and in the early morning light, the outline of a long hill stood etched on the horizon.
Mai Dun
. The ancient Celtic name felt magical. The anticipation of a new dig was exciting and a surge of adrenalin flowed through her veins.

Pale sunlight streamed through the open window, touching the antique furnishings of her room. Dark wood furniture gave off a faint scent of lemon oil and the bed linens smelled of the outdoors. With its delicate, blue-flowered wallpaper, the room looked like someone’s home. It was an old style room with no pretensions to modern life. She felt at ease here. Yes, after the work at Maiden Castle concluded, she might stay a while and work on the book. Pleased with the thought, she mentally arranged a desk in front of the window.

Then the smell of bacon cooking wafted in through the open window. It was irresistible. Instantly hungry, she dressed and hurried downstairs.

No other guests were in the small dining room as she sat and looked at the menu. A charming pen-and-ink drawing of the bed and breakfast was on the front of the menu. The hillfort still dominated the surrounding countryside, as it had in the distant past. It seemed everything was named after the great hill. The road in front of the farm was called Maiden Castle Road, as was the quaint Bed and Breakfast itself—even the menu offered Maiden Castle Pancakes. She smiled. That was way too much of a good thing.

In the spirit of the morning, she ordered the namesake pancakes and a pot of English tea—Yorkshire Gold, her favorite. Lace-curtained French doors led from the dark paneled dining room onto a pale-green pasture, each spike of grass glistening fresh in the sun. It was bucolic and peaceful after crowded London and the events of the past few months. Germaine breathed a deep sigh of contentment.

The cheery waitress brought her the pancakes and tea and switched on the television—the telly as the Brits called it—in the corner of the room.

“Hope you don’t mind, miss. I want to see what’s happening up there at the castle. We were the ones who called the police when that bomb went off. We heard it here first.” She spoke in a pleasing country style, warm and friendly, and Germaine nodded yes, in spite of misgivings.

With a twinge of apprehension, she looked at the television perched high on an old chest, next to a pile of napkins and a neat row of salt and pepper shakers. She felt a gut level reaction and wished she didn’t have to hear about the explosion, and maybe a death. Aubrey said someone was seriously injured.

Rabbit ears antennae balanced on top of the old, black and white television. The waitress fussed with them as a snowy picture emerged, and then cleared to a live newscast from the car park at Maiden Castle.

The small screen filled with a close-up of a man’s face. One eye was terribly bruised and the other swollen and closed. There was a long gash across his forehead. As the camera moved back, she saw one arm was in a sling and he wore a dirt-stained robe. In the background white-robed Druids were chanting. Someone held a microphone up to his mouth.

Germaine put down her teacup. She tried to look away, but couldn’t—her eyes were drawn to the battered man’s image.

“Two nights ago, Jemmy Aston was almost killed by an explosion on Maiden Castle,” the announcer said. “He is in intensive care now and the doctors are not very optimistic. This is his brother, Mick Aston, the new Grand Druid of the
Ancient Order of British Druids
. Can you tell us why you and Jemmy were up there?”

Aston nodded and answered in a slow hesitant way, his voice a monotone.

“Merlin, our old Grand Druid, died, and we wanted to bury him up there. It’s a sacred place ... you know? Jemmy tried to help out ... said he could make the digging go faster with some kind of explosive he used in the SAS.” His voice cracked with emotion. “But something went wrong ... I think he tried to kill himself.”

The camera quickly panned the Druids behind him and then came back to Mick Aston’s ravaged face. There was a look of desperation in his eyes. He raised his voice.

“He’s my baby brother, the sweetest lad that ever lived. I took care of him since he was born.” He gave a little sob. “Iraq screwed him up. He killed too many people—he told me that! He didn’t want to remember. The bloody army taught him how to kill. It’s their fault! We only wanted to bury our friend Merlin up there. It’s our right. The old Druids built Maiden Castle, and it’s ours. Then poor little Jemmy blew himself up so he wouldn’t remember any more killing.”

Germaine slumped back in her chair, shocked at what he said. A suicide? Then Aston broke down and started crying. His big shoulders shook as he wiped his eyes with the long sleeve of his robe. A dark-haired man came out of the crowd and put his arm around him.

It was Conan Ryan’s friend from the conference—Nicholas Greenwood! He guided the distraught man away from the television camera’s intrusive eye. Obviously, he was a friend to these new-age Druids. Was he a Druid? She felt uncomfortable remembering their conversation. She had been less than friendly, even rude, and he had treated her kindly, too.

Germaine kept staring at the television. The man’s anguish over his brother felt so real. A suicide! She couldn’t forget his words—they touched some sensitive, highly emotional place in her. She felt like crying. A young man tried to kill himself so he wouldn’t have to remember war anymore.

She took a sip of tea and tried to think of something else—anything! But Mick Aston’s anguished face was etched in her memory. His love for his brother was powerful. His grief came from the depths of his heart, and it showed.

What must it feel like to be helpless to save someone you loved?

And who had she ever loved that much? There was no brother or sister in her life to care for or love like that. And her marriage? There was no comparison. Too many times she had thought that one over. The harsh reality was although she thought she loved Julian, she had left her marriage every summer to go away and pursue her career, with scarcely a backward thought. Then she blamed him for finding other people to fill the gaps. Though hard to admit, he left her for someone else, and her pride still hurt.

Deep in her heart, she knew they were both to blame. But Mick Aston’s grief exposed a painful truth she wanted to avoid: she had never loved Julian that deeply. She married him for all the wrong reasons—his considerable charm, a powerful sexual attraction and, most of all, she now realized, to not be alone. To belong with someone. To stop feeling afraid. She had struggled with those fears all her life. Germaine felt like she had been born afraid and, somehow, abandoned by the world. She knew that was irrational, but the feeling was there, and emotions ruled everything people did or thought. They were rarely rational.

When she looked down at the untouched pancakes awash in syrup, she felt ill. Her appetite was gone, and it was almost time to go. The announcer’s voice on the television followed her as she walked out the door.

“Time doesn’t seem to have any meaning for the Druids gathered here at Maiden Castle. Everything is theirs as it once was, thousands of years ago. And who is to say they don’t have a right to bury their dead here? They’re English, aren’t they? And this is English soil.”

Aubrey said he hadn’t heard about a suicide, but Germaine couldn’t shake the gruesome thought of someone deliberately blowing himself up. As they entered the car park she looked around for Mick Aston. Was he still here? And what would she say if she found him?

The car park was chaotic and easily twice as full as yesterday. The Dorchester police were having a hard time containing the jostling, noisy crowd behind a taped-off line.

When Germaine nodded in their direction, Aubrey shrugged his shoulders. “They’re all pagans of one sort or another. The one thing they seem to have in common is they honor nature. They just have different ways of showing their spirituality. It’s not all neat and tidy like the Church of England, my dear.”

He tucked her hand under his arm. “I saw this same thing happen at Stonehenge and again at Seahenge. It’s a little confusing seeing them all together.”

Aubrey discretely pointed at one group of women. “Some are Wiccans; they’re the modern witches—very big on the power of magic. And there are lots of Druids here. A lot more. When English Heritage shut down Stonehenge in 1998, they counted fifteen different Druid groups protesting. There are easily twice as many here now. Look over there. I would guess those women in long dresses and cloaks are worshipers of some goddess. You see, everyone thinks they have some right to the past.”

The crowd was loud, calling out to anyone who went by. Just behind the police line, a tall woman in a black hooded-cape held up a sign that said, “My Ancestors Belong in the Earth, Not in a Box.” Next to her, another sign proclaimed “Once is enough, Keep me buried.” When a red-haired boy shoved a sign at Germaine that read, “Don’t Steal My Ancestor’s Bones,” then rattled a bunch of small bones in her face, she drew back quickly.

“Oh no! They’ve heard,” Aubrey said in a low voice as he shepherded her through the crowd.

“Heard what?” Germaine gave the restless crowd an anxious eye.

“There’s a burial up there. I saw a bone yesterday. It might be a skeleton, or at least a part of one. The shovel bums noticed it when they put a cover over the site. Conan telephoned this morning and told me.”

Conan Ryan. Bright blue eyes and gilt-colored hair flashed before her eyes. She felt her face flush at the thought of working so closely with him. Just seeing him in the car park yesterday, she had felt the strong attraction again. Working with him every day would be exciting, but could present problems.

“So how do these people know about it?”

“I don’t know. One of the shovel bums must have talked. That’s all we need to complicate this mess. Now we’ll have HAD and all the other ‘sacred site’ people camping out here and demanding to be heard.”

“What is HAD?” she asked, in a distracted way, still thinking of bright blue eyes.

“It means
Honoring the Ancient Dead.
They’re well organized and want respect for ancient human remains, and any artifacts we find in a burial site. Their position is the bodies were buried in a particular landscape for reasons we can’t ever understand, and we should leave those places alone. Sometimes, if you do move them, the public gets very angry. Ignore them at your peril, Germaine. A lot of people are not at all sure
anyone’s
burial place should be disturbed, even if they were pagans.”

If we leave burial sites alone, there won’t be much left for archaeologists to work with, she noted. Germaine decided not to bring up that troubling thought. The problem was now. With this site.

“That’s a lot like the Native Americans in the United States,” she said. “Some are fighting for the right to rebury their ancestors. Get the bones out of museums and back into the soil. At least some Native Americans have a tribal memory of the rituals their people used to complete the reburial ceremony. Perhaps it could work here?”

“It wouldn’t do, my dear. Think about it—this hillfort is over 6,000 years old. Maiden Castle is so ancient there is no living memory of how people used to bury the dead. You know that from your own work. But I’m sure the Druids would make up something.”

And how would I do a reburial here, she wondered. With a great feast? That was the Celtic way. Drink, eat, and send food for the deceased’s journey into the Otherworld. For the Otherworld was their ultimate destination, that is, until they were reborn again in a different body.

What was it Julius Caesar said about the Druids and dying? “... and their souls do not die, but after death pass from one to another.” He was talking about reincarnation, a concept many believed today. For better or worse, most of what passed as knowledge of the Druids came from Caesar, their conqueror. Germaine took it all with the proverbial pinch of salt.

There was no ritual ceremony she knew of, and she looked at burials all the time, trying to deduce some meaning from the grave goods—those precious items buried with the dead—or to find some meaning in the way the remains were buried or cremated.

There were no absolute answers. The rituals and what people believed thousands of years ago remained hidden, unless, of course, it was written down. But there was no holy bible for prehistoric England. In fact, there was no real writing until the Romans came.

Germaine stared up at Maiden Castle. An early morning mist hung like a pale, thin shroud over the top. Sacred land and bone rattles. Secret burials. A young man trying to kill himself. Death seemed all around this place.

She felt sad and jumpy. She wanted to get away from the crowd of angry people and stop thinking about the tragic young man, who couldn’t stand his own memories of killing.

Memory ...it was as powerful a force as life.

She trailed along in Aubrey’s wake through the crowd until they reached the gate, neatly cordoned off with blue-and-white police tape and guarded by military police. Aubrey handed over a small backpack for the necessary inspection. He placed it with a thud on the hood of the MP’s jeep. They opened it and pulled out a large book and several others. Aubrey fanned his face with his hat. His white hair puffed out like thistle down in the morning breeze.