Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge - A Novel of 2000 BC

‘Aren’t we finished?’ Galeth asked.

The young priest raised a hand to demand silence. He was creeping through the hazels, knees bent, stopping every other pace to listen, just as though he were stalking some large beast. Galeth let him go, presuming that Neel was making certain the stranger’s spirit was not clinging to the temple, but then there was a rush of feet, a yelp and a piteous howl from deep within the hazels and Galeth ran into the shrine’s centre to find Neel holding a struggling creature by the ear. The priest’s captive was a dirty youth with wild black hair that hung matted over a filthy face, so filthy that he seemed as much beast as human. The youth, who was skeletally thin, was beating at Neel’s legs and squealing like a pig while Neel flailed wildly in an attempt to silence him.

‘Let him go,’ Galeth ordered.

‘Hirac wants him,’ Neel said, at last succeeding in landing a stinging blow on the youth’s face. ‘And I want to know why he’s been hiding here! I smelt him. Filthy beast,’ he spat at the boy, then clouted him again. ‘I knew someone had been interfering here,’ Neel went on triumphantly, gesturing with his free hand at the carefully cleared space where the ox-skull sat, ‘and it’s this dirty little wretch!’ The last word turned into an agonized scream as the priest suddenly let go of the boy’s ear and doubled over in pain, and Galeth saw that the boy had reached under Neel’s bone-fringed tunic to squeeze his groin, and then, like a fox cub unexpectedly released from a hound’s jaws, dropped to all fours and scrambled into the hazels.

‘Fetch him!’ Neel shouted. His hands were clutched to his groin and he was rocking back and forward to contain the agony.

‘Let him be,’ Galeth said.

‘Hirac wants him!’ Neel insisted.

‘Then let Hirac fetch him,’ Galeth retorted angrily. ‘And go. Go!’ He drove the injured priest from the temple’s cleared centre, then crouched beside the hazels where the strange creature had vanished. ‘Camaban?’ Galeth called into the leaves. ‘Camaban?’ There was no answer. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’

‘Everyone hurts m-m-me,’ Camaban said from deep in the bushes.

‘I don’t,’ Galeth said, ‘you know I don’t.’ There was a pause and then Camaban appeared nervously from deep inside the hazel thicket. His face was long and thin, with a prominent jaw and large green eyes that were wary. ‘Come and talk to me,’ said Galeth, retreating to the centre of the clearing. ‘I won’t hurt you. I’ve never hurt you.’

Camaban crept forward on hands and feet. He could stand, he could even walk, but his gait was grotesquely dipping since he had been born with a clubbed left foot, for which reason he had been named Camaban. The name meant Crooked Child, though most of the tribe’s children called him Pig, or worse. He was Hengall’s second son, but Hengall had disowned him and banished him from Ratharryn’s walls, dooming the child to scavenge a living among the folk who lived beyond the great embankment. Camaban had been ten when he was cast out, and that had been four summers before, and many marvelled that Camaban had lived since his banishment. Most cripples died very young, or else were chosen to die for the gods, but Camaban had survived. By now, if he had not been a cripple and an outcast, he would have taken the ordeals of manhood, but the tribe would not take him as a man so he was still a child, the crooked child.

Hengall would have preferred to kill Camaban at birth because a crippled son was a disastrous omen, worse than a daughter, but the boy had been born with the red mark on his belly and the mark was shaped like a crescent moon and Hirac had declared that the baby was marked by Lahanna. The child might yet walk, the high priest had said, so give him time. Camaban’s mother had also begged for his life. She had then been Hengall’s oldest wife and had been barren for so long that it was thought she would never give birth. She had prayed to Lahanna, as all childless women do, and she had made a pilgrimage to Cathallo where Sannas, the sorceress, had given her herbs to eat and made her lie one full night wrapped in the bloody pelt of a newly killed wolf. Camaban came nine moons later, but was born crooked. His mother pleaded for him, but it was the moon mark on Camaban’s belly that persuaded Hengall to spare the boy. Camaban’s mother never had another child, but she had loved her wolf-son and when she died Camaban had wailed like an orphaned cub. Hengall had struck his son to silence and then, in disgust, had ordered that the cripple be cast outside Ratharryn’s wall.

‘Are you hungry?’ Galeth now asked the boy. ‘I know you can talk,’ he said after waiting for an answer, ‘you talked just now! Are you hungry?’

‘I’m always hungry,’ Camaban answered, peering suspiciously from under his tangle of matted hair.

‘I’ll have Lidda bring you food,’ Galeth said. ‘But where should she leave it?’

‘B-b-by the river,’ Camaban said, ‘where Hirac’s son died.’ Everyone knew that benighted place downstream from the settlement. The high priest’s child had drowned there, and now a sloe bush, which Hirac claimed was his son’s spirit, grew among the alders and willow.

‘Not here?’ Galeth asked.

‘This is secret!’ Camaban said fiercely, then pointed up to the sky. ‘Look!’ he said excitedly. Galeth looked and saw nothing. ‘The p-p-post!’ Camaban stuttered. ‘The p-post.’

Galeth looked again. ‘The post?’ he asked, then remembered that there had been one post of the death house left in the Old Temple. It had been a familiar enough landmark, jutting and leaning from the clump of hazels, but now it was broken. The lower half was still planted in the earth, but the upper part lay charred and shattered among the undergrowth. ‘It was struck by lightning,’ Galeth said.

‘Slaol,’ Camaban said.

‘Not Slaol,’ Galeth said, ‘Rannos.’ Rannos was the god of lightning.

‘Slaol!’ Camaban insisted angrily. ‘Slaol!’

‘All right! Slaol,’ Galeth said good-naturedly. He looked down at the wild-haired boy, whose face was contorted with rage. ‘And what do you know of Slaol?’

‘He t-t-talks to me,’ Camaban said.

Galeth touched his groin to deflect the god’s displeasure. ‘Talks to you?’

‘All night sometimes,’ Camaban said. ‘And he was angry because L-L-Lengar came back and t-t-took the treasure away. It’s Slaol’s treasure, see?’ He said this last very earnestly.

‘How do you know Lengar took the treasure?’ Galeth asked.

‘B-b-because I watched him! I was here! He t-t-tried to kill Saban and didn’t see me. I was in here.’ Camaban twisted round to burrow back into the hazel bushes. Galeth followed, crawling down a passage that had been trampled through the weeds to where Camaban had woven supple branches together into a living hut. ‘Here’s where I live,’ Camaban said, staring defiantly at his uncle. ‘I’m the g-g-guardian of the temple.’

Galeth could have cried for pity at the boy’s pathetic boast. Camaban’s bed was a pile of soaking bracken, beside which lay his few belongings: a fox’s skull, a broken pot and a raven’s wing. His only clothing was a rotting sheep’s pelt that stank like a tanner’s pit. ‘So no one knows that you live here?’ Galeth asked.

‘Only you,’ the boy said trustingly. ‘I haven’t even t-t-told Saban. He brings me food sometimes, b-b-but I make him take it to the river.’

‘Saban brings you food?’ Galeth asked, surprised and pleased. ‘And you say Slaol talks to you here?’

‘Every d-d-day,’ Camaban stuttered.

Galeth smiled at that nonsense, but Camaban did not see for he had turned and reached further into the leaves where, from a hiding place, he brought out a short bow. It was an Outfolk bow, the stranger’s bow with its wrappings of sinew lashed about the strips of wood and antler. ‘L-L-Lengar used it last night,’ Camaban said. ‘The m-m-man was d-d-dying anyway.’ He paused, looking worried. ‘Why does H-H-Hirac want me?’ he asked.