The Buried Circle
An intriguing literary thriller, ‘The Buried Circle' is a gripping blend of fact and fiction that is impossible to put down.The village of Avebury is one of the most mysterious places in the English countryside. Surrounded by ancient standing stones, crop circles and burial mounds, this is a place where all is not as it seems.Weaving fact with fiction, Jenni Mills's second novel is set in a haunted landscape where the past breaks through into the present. In 1938, the archaeologist Alexander Keiller – a millionaire playboy with a passion for witchcraft and ritual magic – plans to reconstruct Avebury's five-thousand-year-old stone circle. Frannie Robinson and her boyfriend Davey are among those who fall under his dangerous spell, and are nearly destroyed. Seventy years later, Frannie's granddaughter India sets out on her own quest to discover the truth. But digging up the past unearths the unexpected, and may prove lethal…
Читать The Buried Circle онлайн беплатно
THE
BURIED CIRCLE
Jenni Mills
In memory of my father, Robert Mills, who flew
1916-78 and my mother, Sheila Mills, who danced 1921-2007
I sought for ghosts and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin, And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.
Percy Bysshe Shelley,
Hymn To Intellectual Beauty
Time wounds all heels.
Groucho Marx, John Lennon,
and others, including Margaret Robinson
Table of Contents
‘History, archaeology, it’s all moonshine, really. We’re only guessing.’
Dr Martin Ekwall,
interviewed on BBC Wiltshire Sound
1942
‘Don’t be afraid,’ he says. The Insect King. ‘It’s only a mask.’
Eyes like a fly, elephant’s trunk that’s long, rubbery…
‘It’s only a mask,’ he says again.
‘I know it’s a mask,’ I says, braver than I feel. But there’s masks and masks. I’ve seen masks. I’ve seen what happens in the moonlight in the Manor gardens.
‘Frannie…’ It’s only a whisper, so I’m not sure if it came out of his mouth or out of my head. He’s at me now, pressing himself against me, and I’m feeling all the bits of him, long gropy fingers and the hard poky bits. There’s a glow in the sky, something burning near the railway yards, searchlights over Swindon, the banshee howl of the warning, and the anti-aircraft batteries have started up.
‘Take it off,’ he says.
‘The mask?’
‘Your flicking robe.’ At least, I think he says robe.
‘Coat.’
‘Whichever.’
‘A bit nippy for that.’ I’m trying to keep it calm, trying to be funny, pretend I’m in control, because this isn’t what I meant to happen. He gives me a push, quite hard, and I’m up against the stone. It’s cold against my back, like moonlight, and scratching at me like fingers through the thin material of my coat. There’s really nowhere to go now.
I would be afraid, but I won’t let myself. You can’t let them have everything. You can’t let them have your fear. You got to keep a bit of yourself. I’m going to put my bit where it’s safe, a long way away from here.
Beech trees, black against a silver sky. Somewhere else the real moonlight is pouring down. Bombers’ moon. A killing moon. Planes like fat blowflies trekking high above the Marlborough Downs. I take myself away, as far as I can, trying not to feel the burning down there, fingers, hands, other things, feels like there’s lots of them all at once, wanting a piece.
A voice whispering again, Frannie, Frannie. It’s terrible dark. There’s a smell of rubber, thick and choking. Hard to breathe. An awful slick, oily smell of rubber…
‘I don’t want to do it,’ I said. ‘It’s too dangerous.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. The shots will be fantastic. You’ll love it. Unless you’d like us to use someone else on the series?’
The usual blackmail. If you’re experienced enough to do the job, you can say no. If you’re not quite twenty-five, and desperate to claw a foothold in television, you’ll do anything. I made one last pathetic attempt to get him to change his mind. ‘Seriously, Steve, I’ve never filmed like this before. I’m not properly trained. If this was the BBC, the hazard-assessment form would have it flagged up as a major risk.’
‘There’s a harness, Indy. You’ll be strapped in.’
‘My legs’ll be dangling.’
‘What’s happened to your balls?’
‘My balls, if I had any, would be dangling too.’
So, my legs are dangling. My non-existent testicles are dangling. My bum, perched on the edge of the open helicopter door, has gone entirely numb. Below me is–well, if I were a proper cameraman I’d be better at judging these things, but I’d say a good six or seven hundred feet of nothing. Below that is hard Wiltshire chalk, with a skimpy dressing of ripening barley. The helicopter’s shadow races across it, a tiny black insect dwarfed by the bigger shadows of the clouds.
Steve, crouched behind me, taps me on the shoulder. I turn my head towards him, very, very carefully, in case even this simple movement unbalances me and I go tumbling out to become another shadow on the chalk. He’s saying something, but the wind and the noise of the rotors snatch his voice away. He makes cupping motions with his hands by his ears.
