Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

'Level?'

'Flat!' Camaban said angrily, making a smoothing gesture with his hand. 'Flat like the surface of a lake.'

Saban frowned. 'The temple slopes,' he said, pointing to the gentle fall in the ground, 'so if the sky ring's pillars are all the same height then the ring of stone will follow the slope.'

'The ring must be flat!' Camaban insisted. 'It must be flat!' He paused to watch Hanna walk away from the hut and a sly smile crossed his face. 'She looks like Derrewyn.'

'She is young and dark haired,' Saban said carelessly, 'that is all.'

'But your daughter's life says she is not Derrewyn's daughter,' Camaban said, still smiling, 'does it not?'

'You heard my oath,' Saban said, and then to distract Camaban he promised to make the sky ring flat, although he knew that would take still more time. He laid light timbers across the tops of the pillars and on each timber in turn he laid a clay trough; when he filled the trough with water he could see whether or not the adjacent pillars were level. Some pillars stood too tall and slaves had to climb pegged ladders and hammer the pillar tops down. After that, because Saban dared not erect a stone that proved too short, he deliberately made the new pillars slightly too long so that each of them had to be hammered and scraped down until it stood level with its neighbours.

One stone almost broke as they erected it. It slid from its rollers, rammed into the facing timbers and a great crack showed in the stone, running diagonally up its face. Saban ordered it raised anyway and by some miracle it did not break as it swung into place, though the crack was still visible. 'It will serve,' Camaban said, 'it will serve.'

In another two years all the stones had come from Cathallo and half the sky ring's pillars had been placed, but before those pillars could be completed Saban knew he had to drag the sun house capstones into the temple's centre and he did that in the summer. The stones were hauled by scores of slaves who manoeuvred the sledges so that each capstone stood squarely by the twin pillars it would surmount.

Saban had spent days and nights wondering how to lift those capstones. Thirty-five had to be raised into the sky, thirty of them for the sky ring and five on the arches of the sun house, and it had been deep in one winter's night that the answer had come to him.

The answer was timber. A vast amount of timber that had to be cut from the forests and dragged to the temple where, with a team of sixteen slaves, Saban would try to make his idea work.

He began with the tallest arch. The sledge with the arch's capstone lay parallel to the twin pillars and about two paces away from it and Saban ordered the slaves to lay an oblong of timbers all about the sledge so that when they were done it seemed as though the long stone rested on a platform of wood. The slaves now used oak levers to raise one end of the capstone and Saban shoved a long timber underneath it, crosswise to the timbers in the bottom layer. He did the same at the stone's other end, and now the capstone rested on two timbers a forearm's height above the oblong platform.

More timbers were brought and laid all about the two supporting beams until, once again, the stone appeared to be resting on a platform, and then the stone was levered up again and propped on two blocks of wood. A new platform was laid about the blocks, using timbers that lay parallel with the beams of the first layer. The platform was now three layers high and was wide enough and long enough for men to work their levers under the stone with each subsequent raising.

Layer by layer the stone was raised until the boulder had been carried to the very top of the twin pillars and was poised there on a monstrous pile of stacked timbers. Twenty-five layers of wood now supported the capstone, but it still could not be slid across to the pillars for Saban had to measure the twin knobs on the pillars' tops and make chalk marks on the capstone where the corresponding sockets should be bored. It had taken eleven days to raise the stone and another twenty were needed to hammer and grind the holes, and then the stone had to be turned over with levers, and two more layers of wood added beneath it before the slaves could lever it, finger's breadth by finger's breadth, across from the platform and onto two beams that carried the stone until its sockets were poised directly above the twin knobs on the pillar tops.

Three men levered up one end of the capstone and Saban kicked away the beam that had been supporting the stone, and the slaves pulled the lever away so that the stone crashed down onto the pillar. The platform shook, but neither the capstone nor the pillar broke. The second beam was freed, the stone crashed down again and the first, and tallest, of the five great arches was complete.

The platform was dismantled and taken to the second pair of pillars and, as the slaves began to place the first layer of timbers about the second capstone, Saban stepped back and gazed up at the first.

And he felt humbled. He knew, better than anyone, how much labour, how many days of grinding and hammering, and how much sweat and grief had gone into those three stones. He knew that one of the pillars was too short and stood on a grotesquely clubbed foot in a hole that was too shallow, but even so the archway was magnificent. It took his breath away. It soared. And its capstone, a boulder so heavy that sixteen oxen had been needed to drag it from Cathallo, was now lifted into the sky out of man's reach. It would stay there for ever and Saban trembled as he wondered whether any man would ever again lift so great a burden so high into the sky. He turned and looked at the sun which was setting behind pale clouds on the western horizon. Slaol must surely be watching, he thought. Slaol would surely reward this work with Lallic's life and that hope brought tears to Saban's eyes and he dropped to his knees and touched his forehead to the ground.

'It took how many days?' Camaban wanted to know.

'A few days more than a whole moon,' Saban said, 'but the others will be swifter, for the pillars are lower.'

'There are thirty-four more capstones to raise!' Camaban shouted. 'That's three years!' He howled his disappointment, then turned to stare at the slaves who were hammering and grinding the remaining sky-ring pillars smooth. 'Not every stone has to be properly shaped,' Camaban said. 'If they're nearly square, then let them go up. Forget the outer faces, they can be left rough.'

Saban stared at his brother. 'You want me to do what?' he asked. For years Camaban had been demanding perfection, now he was willing to let half-shaped stones be raised?

'Do it!' Camaban shouted, then turned on the listening slaves. 'None of you will go home till the work is done, none of you! So work! Work! Work!'

It was possible now to see how the finished temple would look, for the last pillars were being erected and, from the west and north, the circle of pillars already looked complete. The sun house was built, towering above the growing ring of stone, and Saban would often walk a hundred or more paces away and stare at what he had made and feel astonishment. It had taken years, this temple, but it was beautiful. Most of all he loved the pattern of shadows that it cast, regular and straight-sided, unlike any shadows he had ever seen, and he understood how he was watching the broken pattern of the world being mended on this hillside and at those moments he would marvel at his brother's dream. At other times he would stand in the temple's centre and feel shrunken by the pillars and oppressed by their shadows. Even on the sunniest days there was a darkness inside the stones that seemed to loom over him so that he could not rid himself of the fear that one of the capstones would fall. He knew they could not. The capstones were socketed, and the pillars' tops were dished to hold the lintels firm, yet even so, and especially standing beside Haragg's bones in the narrow space between the tallest arch and the mother stone, he felt crushed by the temple's dark heaviness. Yet if he walked away from it, crossed the ditch and turned to look again, the darkness went.