Circle of Stones Read online

  By the time I turned into Queen Square I was thoroughly ruffled, & yet the sight of the tall, elegant houses, their harmony and perfection in the moonlight, calmed my nerves. Queen’s Square was Forrest’s best work yet. He could get some things right. Perhaps I should see his actions as the eccentricities of a genius; after all, everyone knew such men were mad.

  I let myself in & went to climb the stairs, but as I passed the workroom I saw his coat, flung on the back of a chair.

  I stopped. His voice & Mrs. Hall the housekeeper’s argued upstairs.

  Glancing around, I stepped across quickly & thrust my fingers in the pocket. The thick paper of the letter crackled as I unfolded it.

  I stared at it, astonished.

  No letter at all, but a drawing. It was a two-faced image, a Janus, one face staring back, one forward. One male, the other female. And all around it, in a great circle, so that its own tail rested in its own mouth, was a narrow serpent.

  Below, someone had written a single word in spiky writing.

  OROBOROS.

  I had no idea what it meant.

  Bladud

  I dreamed of the family I had left behind. I wandered oakwoods and the bare downs, and the raven-wind screamed in my ears as I lay deep under the leaves.

  You out there in your warm house, how can you know how a lost soul feels?

  My disease erupted in pools and quagmires, ran in the rivers like fever. I was the land and it was a winter world. Disease comes in many forms. It can be obsession, it can be mania.

  A man can spread it even to his friends.

  One day demons came out of the oakwoods to torment me.

  They grunted and snuffled. They had great snouts and their bodies were pale as fungi.

  At night they lay down around me, earthpigs and boars and beasts of legend. I became one of them, following their trails, eating the mast and mushrooms they dug out.

  They fought and roared and laughed at me.

  And I began to see how often they roamed deep into the heartwood of a remote valley, and always when they came back the scabs of their pocked skin had cleared to a clean health.

  Hope is such a frail thing. Such a tiny glimmer in the darkness.

  I was worn thin and exhausted. Maybe that was why the thought took so long to come.

  It formed slowly in my mind like the light in the east before dawn.

  It said to me, “If you go where the demons go, will you be cured too?”

  I followed them.

  For dark days I crawled like a beast down and down into the marshy valley.

  Steams rose around me. Tiny insects whined and bit me.

  I put my paw and snout to the ground and splashed in water that was hot.

  I crawled inside the circle of its comfort.

  Sulis

  She had unpacked everything except the blue file.

  It lay at the bottom of her bag, in the secret zipped compartment. For a moment she gazed at it as she sat cross-legged on the bed in her pajamas, with the sunlight coming almost horizontally through the open window. Jackdaws karked in the trees of the Circus.

  Then she unzipped the pocket and took the file out.

  Why did she keep it? In all the moves, the different bedrooms, the endless foster homes, the file had come with her. If this was a new life, she should get rid of it.

  Instead she opened it, took out the photocopies of the newspaper cuttings, and spread them on the duvet.

  They were grubby now, and split where she had kept them folded for so long. No one knew she had them. Twelve cuttings, all from different newspapers, and they had all used the same photograph. The famous, only photograph anyone had ever managed to get. A small, startled child of seven, caught getting out of a car, her red hair in frizzy curls, her wide eyes dazzled by the flash of the camera, her hand tight in a policewoman’s. She wore a striped hooded top and little-girl trousers with pink flowers on them. She was so small, so skinny. Above her the headlines screamed.

  CHILD DEATH MYSTERY

  WHAT HAS SHE SEEN?

  TERROR IN THE PLAYGROUND

  Sulis lifted one of the pages and brought the photo up close to her eyes so that the image became a blur of ink. Then, equally slowly, she drew it back down into focus. Either way it was the same. The girl in the photograph wasn’t her anymore.

  The car had probably been an unmarked police car. There had been many and she couldn’t remember this one, but she remembered the camera. It had been thrust in her face, and the flash had terrified her, and the policewoman—that had been Jean—had gone berserk and tried to grab the man, and he’d gotten away on a motorbike.

  He must have made a fortune from the photograph.

  She raised her head and looked in the wavy mirror Hannah had bought for her wall. She saw a different girl from the one in the photo. A thinner, tighter face. A blue, steady gaze that gave nothing away. Her hair was dyed blond now and hung straight to her shoulders—she looked like thousands of other girls of her age. Average height, average weight. Her clothes were without personality. She’d chosen them carefully, avoiding sparkle, bright color, too much flesh. No images, no slogans. She looked like a student—any student. That was the disguise. That was Sulis.

  After a moment she folded the papers and pushed them back into the zipped compartment. She shoved the bag to the back of the wardrobe, shut the door, locked it, and put the little key in her pocket. Hannah and Simon were very keen to give her privacy. That made a change.

  She said to her reflection, “New face, new house, new life. All you need now is some money.”

  Downstairs, at breakfast in the small kitchen hung with herbs, she licked yogurt from her spoon and said quietly, “I’d like to get a job, if you don’t mind. Do my bit toward the housekeeping.”

  Her new parents looked at each other. Hannah poured skim milk onto her homemade muesli. Carefully she said, “Sulis, that’s very kind, but we have to think about your safety. This is a city full of tourists—they come from all over, including the North. Someone might recognize you . . .”

  “They won’t. Ten years is a long time. I don’t even recognize me anymore.”

  “It may seem a long time at your age.”

  Simon had put the newspaper down. “For some of us it’s barely yesterday. Besides, if it’s about money, there’s really no need. We both work.” He glanced at Hannah anxiously. “And, well, social services pay toward your upkeep.”

  Sulis nodded. “I don’t mind.”

  “Mind?”

  “That they pay you to look after me. I didn’t expect you to do it for free.”

  Was that harsh? They were so easy to surprise. They were different from the couples she had been with before. So wide-open, so idealistic. She could see Simon now, caught in awkwardness, as if he was listening to the soft classical music from the radio, but really her words had stung him. She should be careful. He was already a bit wary of her.

  So she said, “It’s not just about money. In October I start college. I have to get used to going out, being around people. I have to start building my own life. That’s the whole point of coming here. Once I’m eighteen, I’m on my own, and I have to be ready.”

  Hannah came and sat at the table. “Are you sure you can face it?”

  “I’m not scared.”

  “What sort of job?”

  Sulis put the spoon in the dish. “Waitress? Something in a shop? It need only be till term starts . . . something quiet. There must be loads of holiday work here. As you said, it’s full of tourists.”

  Hannah looked at Simon. For a moment only the piano music filled the kitchen, and the drone of a car outside.

  “We’ll have to check with . . . the authorities,” Simon said.

  Sulis shrugged.

  “Well look.” Hannah folded her fingers. “If they agree, I have a f
riend who works down at the baths. She goes to my yoga class. She was telling me yesterday that one of their summer girls had left them in the lurch a bit. I could find out . . .”

  “Baths?” Sulis stared. “You mean as some sort of lifeguard?”

  There was a split second of embarrassment. Then Simon said, “No,” and Hannah laughed nervously. “No, I mean the Roman baths, Sulis. The museum. The hot spring.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “The Waters of Sulis.” Simon folded his paper, went over to the door and stopped, halfway through it. Behind him in the huge white sitting room she could see his drawing board in the window, the long gauzy curtains drifting over it. “It will depend on Alison.”

  “Fine.” Sulis raised her eyes and stared at him, for just a second too long. Then she smiled.

  “We wouldn’t want them to feel left out, would we?”

  • • •

  In fact, she thought later, listening to Hannah making calls, it didn’t matter what Alison or anyone else thought. They’d ruled her life for years but she was going to be free of them now. She was in her ideal city now.

  The sitting room windows looked down on the Circus.

  At this time in the morning it was fairly quiet. A few pedestrians walked by, a man sat with a newspaper on the solitary bench, a white van with Peter Bull Builders on it drove slowly around. The leaves of the central trees were still green, with only one or two shading to early russet.

  In the morning sun the perfect curving facade of the houses was a satisfaction to her. She could never tire of looking at it. It was a circle of gold and she was safe inside it. Then she noticed there were carvings, a row of emblems all the way around, above the doorways. She leaned closer, trying to see them more clearly. Why hadn’t she noticed them before?

  From the hall, Hannah’s voice drifted through opera from the radio. “Oh yes . . . fine. That sounds really the best thing. Ruth, it’s so kind of you . . . Oh the apartment is wonderful, thanks . . .”

  Sulis smiled to herself. Why had she chosen Simon and Hannah? She could have gone abroad—there were people in France who’d offered to take her. France would really have been a new life.

  But she knew why. It was because of the city.

  Simon came in and took a book out of the shelves. One whole wall of the room was lined with them, big expensive books on architecture and art. She said, “Who designed this street?”

  He came up and gazed out, reflected in the glass panes. “The Circus? A man called Jonathan Forrest. A brilliant, crazy man. Obsessed with druids and magic. He was one of the first to survey Stonehenge—properly, I mean, not just some higgledy-piggledy drawing. They say he based the design of the Circus on various stone circles. There are thirty houses in the Circus, and thirty stones in the outer circle of Stonehenge. The dimensions are exactly the same as the Great Ring at Stanton Drew, not far from here. He went there and measured the place in a hailstorm. Some people say this whole street is a magical construct.”

  Was that why she felt at home here? She said, “It must be a great place for an architect to live. Every time you look out, there it is.”

  “Bye!” Hannah said, laughing, into the phone. “See you Friday!”

  Simon nodded. “Spaces are important—the shapes of them. Where they are on the earth. I think there’s something about this place that you can never quite get at. You keep thinking you know what it’s about, but it curves away from you, and all of a sudden it’s coming up behind you, surprising you. Like a secret.”

  Catching her eyes on him in the glass, he stopped. “Sorry. I didn’t mean . . .”

  “It’s okay,” she said quietly.

  Hannah came in, her pretty face alight. “Well, Sulis, if you really want the job it’s there. Some girl has gone off to Lanzarote without telling anyone, and Ruth’s desperate. She says can you go down this afternoon for a chat. I can come with you . . .”

  “No,” she said. “Thanks, but I can go on my own.”

  Hannah glanced at Simon. “Are we doing the right thing?”

  “I think so, angel.”

  Sulis watched him kiss Hannah’s cheek and go out. Their affection fascinated her.

  She said, “What do they pay me?”

  Hannah looked confused; she pushed back the tangle of hair from her eyes. “Oh, do you know, I forgot to ask! Shall I call back . . . ?”

  “No.” Sulis shook her head, and managed a rueful smile. “I’ll find out.”

  For a moment, then, she had felt older than Hannah, as if Hannah were some ditzy, hopeless little sister.

  And maybe she was older, because Hannah had never lived in terror for her life. Hannah had never lain awake at night wondering if he was out there. If he was still looking for her.

  • • •

  It was raining when she walked down the steps into the Circus, and that was good, because she could put an umbrella up and keep it low over her face. The wide sidewalk gleamed in the downpour; the black railings were speckled with fat raindrops. She walked around and down the hill, seeing the city’s glorious splendor below her.

  She’d always loved buildings. Other kids had played with dolls and guns, but even in nursery school she had only played with the bricks. A set of yellow and green and blue wooden blocks. That must have been how she’d met Caitlin, because Caitlin had liked to play with them too.

  She walked quickly, through parked cars, dodging the traffic. The city was busy, its shops full of people. She passed the banks and some boutiques, hearing a few American accents. Above the rooftops the sky was blue and yet clouds boiled up there; a gusty shower spattered the umbrella.

  She and Caitlin had spent hours playing with the bricks. Towers mostly, that fell when some kid jarred the table, or houses with yellow walls and blue doors and a red roof. She had never been able to get a chimney on them; she half smiled now, remembering how annoying that had been. And Caitlin had helped, chattering on like little kids do. It had only taken days for them to become best friends.

  At the bottom of the hill the road changed. The beautiful, measured symmetry of the shops disappeared; the streets became smaller and less regular; she took a right turn and found herself in a network of narrow alleys and steps leading down, as if this part of town was left over from some older tangle, before Jonathan Forrest and those like him imposed order, and harmony.

  Under the dripping umbrella she felt she was suddenly being led into her fractured past, that time when she was small and the world a place of exaggerated hugeness—high steps, big chairs, conversations of adults as meaningless as the leaves that rustled high above her head. Best not to think of it. Nor of Caitlin.

  Too late. Already the old anxiety had come back and she turned, circling to glance behind her. Shoppers.

  Kids, running.

  A man.

  He was far back, right up at the top of the narrow alley. He was gazing into a shop window, a man in a dark raincoat, his face turned away from her, and she stared at him hard, because all at once she was afraid that he might have been the man reading a newspaper on the bench in the Circus that morning.

  No.

  Yes.

  She didn’t know. She turned, took a deep breath and told herself to stop imagining things. No one knew where she was. She was safe.

  She made herself walk slow, and steady. Rain had turned the street glossy; colors from the windows ran and splashed under her feet like paint on a wet canvas. Down a few steps on the right a shop doorway opened; a dark interior of hanging mobiles, wind chimes, cases of silver jewelry. She ducked inside, closed the umbrella, and stood with her back to the doorway, watching its dim outline in a mirror on the wall.

  After a minute, the man passed.

  He wore a cap now, pulled down in the rain, and his coat was long. A newspaper was bundled under his arm. She caught a glimpse of a sharp face, dark hair. He
didn’t look to the side.

  She drifted around the shop, gazing unseeing at rows of silver rings.

  Lots of people carried newspapers. It meant nothing. She hung around for ten minutes, then said, “Thanks,” to the disappointed girl behind the counter, and edged out.

  The rain had stopped. Watery sunlight broke over the houses.

  She ran, quickly, down to the abbey churchyard.

  As she had expected, it was full of tourists. They stood around watching the jugglers that busked here, taking photos and roaring with laughter at the comedy routine. Sulis edged past a line of Japanese schoolchildren outside the museum; she had to push through and she stumbled suddenly out into an open space at the front.

  She bumped into a pig.

  It was huge, and plastic. Pink flowers had been painted all over it, and grass on its hooves and legs. In its snout a great ring gleamed.

  “Ticket please.”

  The boy was about her age, wearing a shirt and a badge saying SECURITY.

  Sulis said, “I haven’t got one. I’m looking for Mrs. Ruth Matthews. About the job.”

  “Oh.” He glanced behind her at the impatient schoolkids. “Well, you’d better ask at the desk. They’ll get her.”

  At that moment the doors opened and the schoolkids flooded in like a great tide. She was shoved against the boy and they both lurched into the pig. It wobbled and she grabbed at it, and so did he. She said, “Why on earth is this here?”

  “Part of an installation,” the boy said shortly. “Some artist’s done it. Pigs. All colors. All over the city.”

  He made a face, and she giggled. Then her face froze.

  Behind the kids, just for a second, she saw the sidewalk cafe outside, a man sipping coffee, staring straight at her through the chattering crowd.

  “All right?” the boy asked.

  She nodded. Numb.

  Zac

  I was daydreaming in the workroom when I heard them arrive. Glancing down, I saw I’d drawn the serpent eating its tail on the side of the plan I was supposed to be completing. I slid a paper over it quickly. Then I went to the door & opened it. Just a crack.