Stephen Lawhead - The Paradise War

Simon shifted the Jaguar into gear and the car rolled onto the road. «You don't believe Robert and Morag. Is that what you're saying?»

«Well, I didn't see any extinct beasties. Did you see any extinct beasties? No? Golly, what a surprise,» I scoffed.

«What about the picture in the newspaper?»

«The rag probably gave him a hundred to pose for the picture, and another hundred to keep his mouth shut,» I railed. «But we didn't see any aurochs, because there was never any aurochs to see.»

«We saw a damn fine example of an iron-age spear.»

«Grant made that up himself to make a good story better. Give me half-a-day in a machine shop and I'll make you one just like it.»

«You really think so?»

«Oh, for Pete's sake, Simon. Wake up and smell the Porridge! We've been conned. Let's give it up and go home.»

He turned his head and regarded me placidly. «You're the one who asked about the cairn,» he said. «Never would have occurred to me.»

Simon would drag that in. «Okay, the excitement of the moment got to me. So what?»

«So it was your idea. We're going to see the cairn.» He downshifted and we barrelled along.

«We don't have to do this on my account,» I pleaded. «I've changed my mind. Look, it's barely nine o'clock. If we leave right now we can be back in Oxford by tonight.»

«It's less than a mile up the road,» Simon pointed out. «We'll swing by, take a look, and then we're off. How's that?»

«Promise?»

«Yes,» he said.

«Liar! You don't have any intention of going home yet.»

He laughed. «What do you want, Lewis? Blood?»

«I want to go home!»

Simon took his right hand from the steering wheel and pointed at the atlas. «See if you can find this cairn thingy on the map.»

I retrieved the atlas and scanned the page quickly. «I don't see it.»

Me and my big mouth. The cairn thingy in question had come up because, as we were sitting in Farmer Grant's kitchen, my head filled with thoughts of iron-age spears and extinct oxen and such, I suddenly blurted out: «Is there a cairn nearby?»

«Och aye,» Farmer Bob had said. «Near enough. Used to be part o' this steading, but ma grandfather sold off the bit wi' the cairn. The Old'un was of a superstitious mind.»

Then he had gone on to tell us how to find the cairn, because Simon had immediately insisted that we should go and check it out since we were in the area. Farmer Bob seemed to think this a proper line of investigation and was only too happy to tag along. Simon cautioned him against that, suggesting that more university chaps might show up any moment, wanting to have a word with him. We had then made our farewells, promising to keep in touch and pop in again soon for a visit.

And now we were on our way to see this heap of rocks, or whatever passed for a cairn in this dank hinterland, following one of those deep, narrow, twisting, brush-lined farm roads purpose-built for head-on collisions. We met no one on the road, however, and in due course came to the gate Grant had told us to look out for. Simon stopped the car and we got out. «It's across this field, in the glen.» He pointed down the hillside to a line of treetops just visible above the broad descending curve of the field.

We stood for a moment gazing across the field. I heard the bark of a dog and swivelled towards the sound. Behind us, the way we had come, I saw a man approaching with three or four good-sized dogs on leads. They were still too far away to see properly, but it seemed to me that the dogs were white. «Somebody's coming.»

«It's just one of Robert's neighbors,» Simon said.

«Maybe we'd better go back.»

«He won't bother us. Come on.»

Without further ado, we climbed over the gate and jogged across the field. It felt good to work my legs and feel the crisp air in my lungs. At the lower end of the field we came to a stone wall, scrambled over it, and slid down a dirt bank into the glen.

It was little more than a crease between two hills, deep and narrow. A lively brook ran among the roots of the bare, twisted trees that lined the sides of the glen. Mist rose from the brook to seep among the trees. Away from the sun and light, the dim glen remained chill and damp.

In the center of this hidden pocket of land stood an earthen mound: squat, roundish, perhaps nine feet tall, with a circumference of thirty feet. But for a curious beehive-shaped protuberance on the west side, it would have been almost perfectly conical.

«How did you know there would be a cairn?» Simon asked. His voice sounded dead in the still air of the hollow.

«I guessed. With a name like Carnwood Farm, I figured there must be a cairn in a wood around here someplace, right?» I looked at the odd structure. «And here it is. Now we've seen it. Let's go before someone comes.» I expected the man with the dogs to appear any moment.

Simon ignored me and walked closer.

A clump of holly grew on the north side of the cairn, and a thicket of something else on the south side. The exterior was covered with short grass. The air in the glen smelled of moldy leaves and wet earth. In the near distance I hear a a dog bark.

«I don't want to be caught trespassing,» I told Simon. He didn't answer, but continued his inspection.

«What's the deal with these cairns?» he asked, after walking slowly around the odd structure.

«Nothing,» I said. «Nothing whatsoever.»

«Be a sport. I really want to know.»

I took a deep breath and sat down on a rock while Simon undertook a second circumnavigation of the cairn. «Well,» I began, «nobody knows for certain, but apparently people used to heap up stones and such into shapes like this to mark things.»

«What sort of things?»

«Any old thing-a crossroads, a well or spring, the spot where something important happened.»

«Like what?»

From the hilltop above the glen I heard a dog bark; I turned toward the sound and thought I saw a glimmer of white through the trees. «What do you mean-like what?»

«What important happenings did they want to mark?»

«Who knows? Maybe the place where somebody struck gold, or somebody killed a giant, or somebody carried off somebody's wife, or somebody found religion-who knows? It's all conjecture, anyway. Maybe they just wanted to tidy up the landscape, so they tossed all the rocks into a pile.»

«Then these cairns aren't hollow,» Simon concluded, continuing his slow pacing around the turf-covered mound.

«Some of them are,» I allowed. «What difference does it make?» I heard the crack of a broken branch from somewhere behind me. I whirled towards the sound and saw a brief flash of white flicker between the dark boles of close-grown trees. «I think someone's coming. We'd better get out of here.»

«The hollow ones,» he said, «what's in them?»

«There's no buried treasure, if that's what you're thinking.» I watched him for a few moments. He seemed so intent on understanding this ancient monument, I couldn't help asking, «What's got into you, Simon?»

He paused in his third circuit of the mound. «What do you mean?»

«Don't give me that.»

«Give you what, dear boy?» He peered at me blandly.

«Don't 'dear boy' me. Why this sudden interest in all this Celtic stuff? What's going on?»

«You're the one who asked about the cairn, not me.»

«Yeah, we already established that.»

«You're as intrigued as I am,» Simon concluded. «The difference is that I own up to it, and you, my friend, do not.»

«Come off it, Simon. Don't play innocent with me. What's really going on? What do you know?»

He had disappeared from my line of sight around the back of the mound. I waited and he didn't appear. «Simon?» My voice sounded muffled in heavy wool.