The Devil’s Highway
Three journeys. Three thousand years. One destination. The Devil’s Highway is a thrilling, epic and intimate tale of love, loss, fanaticism, heroism and sacrifice.A Roman road, an Iron Age hill fort, a hand-carved flint, and a cycle of violence that must be broken.An ancient British boy, discovering a terrorist plot, must betray his brother to save his tribe. In the twenty-first century, two people – one traumatised by war, another by divorce – clash over the use and meaning of a landscape. In the distant future, a gang of feral children struggles to reach safety in a broken world. Their stories are linked by one ancient road, the ‘Devil’s Highway’ in the heart of England: the site of human struggles that resemble one another more than they differ.Spanning centuries, and combining elements of historical and speculative fiction with the narrative drive of pure thriller, this is a breathtakingly original novel that challenges our dearly held assumptions about civilisation.
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4th Estate
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This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2018
Copyright © Gregory Norminton 2018
Cover illustration by John Walker
Map and Hare, wood ant and bee-eater drawings by John Walker
Gregory Norminton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780008243753
Ebook Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 9780008243777
Version: 2018-07-23
Those that despise Scotland, and the north part of England, for being full of vast and barren land, may take a view of this part of Surrey, and look upon it as a foil to the beauty of the rest of England; … here is a vast tract of land, some of it within seventeen or eighteen miles of the capital city, which is not only poor, but even quite sterile, given up to barrenness, horrid and frightful to look on, not only good for little but good for nothing …
DANIEL DEFOE, A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain
It is not a celebrated patch of Earth. There are few books and no ballads about it. It is four thousand acres of plantation pine, grassland and heath, hemmed in by roads and houses and industrial estates. In autumn the air smells of mushrooms, in summer of resin and the slough of pine needles. There is a Roman road and an Iron Age hill fort. Few locals visit either, for our lives are too hectic: we drive everywhere and rarely walk. Yet set out on foot, at dawn, and you can sense the ancient place beyond the pines. Open to the sky. Fully itself perhaps only when experienced. Made by the eye that sees it.
RICHARD BOROWSKI, The Blasted Heath
The Roman road; the eagle’s flight … the meeting of present, past and future.
VALERY LARBAUD
Contents
1
They worked in the byre by torchlight. In the stalls the cow bellowed. Andagin feared she would wake their father, who had succumbed to sleep like a warrior to his wounds.
‘I looked for it,’ he said, ‘where I left it on the heath.’
‘You mistook the place.’
‘No.’
‘The wind carried it off.’
‘My cord was strong. She unfastened it. That means spring will come.’
‘Spring always comes.’ Judoc buried his fork in straw and dung. ‘Corn dolls are for children.’
‘But Ma says –’
‘Ma says.’ Judoc’s voice was fierce but he took care to whisper: ‘Will you stay her whelp for ever or would you become a man?’
Andagin felt the heat rise in his face. ‘Do not call me whelp.’
‘Why not? You whine like one. We need strong gods. Male gods like Taran. Thunder, not Earth. There – enough shovelling for me.’
They contemplated the steaming baskets. Judoc’s face was hard to read for the torch burning behind it.
‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘for barking at you. But dreams will not save us.’ He pulled Andagin into his arms and held him. He reeked of sweat and damp wool. ‘Be strong,’ said Judoc, and releasing Andagin he hoisted a basket to his midriff. Then he was gone.
Andagin patted the cow’s hot flank. Taking the torch, he left the byre and walked into a weeping wind.
Snowflakes clung like burrs to his cloak and the stung tips of his eyelids. Winter searched for every rent in his gear. After the smoke and fug of the hut, after his father’s nightlong coughing, the cold was welcome, a familiar enemy. Andagin contemplated the shuddering pelt of the heath. He pissed into the heather, expectorated as Judoc had taught him – a lusty hoick into the wind. He returned to the sorrow of the hut.
His mother was up and doing. He ducked out from under her tousling hand and sat beside the fire, where Nyfain greeted him with her habitual scowl.
‘Where’s your brother gone? Back to his pack again?’
Andagin shrugged. To think about last night’s shouting made his heart clench. He watched Nyfain’s fingers weave a basket of heather stems.
‘Will you patch my cap for me?’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘It has a hole.’
‘You made the hole.’
She was angry because Judoc was missing. Were he near she would have been no happier.
‘The snow will get in.’
His cousin huffed and pulled the cap off his head. She inspected it and pushed a little finger through the gap. He watched her reach for the bone needle she kept and some thread.
