To Chase the Storm: The Frontier Series 4 (16 page)

At the end of the second week Catherine called down to the two men sweating in their trench. They were to leave their work and start at a new point. Under Catherine’s direction they carefully levered aside the ring of stones which a photographer had already recorded for her. The circle was a mystery as much as the hill itself. Their only theory so far was that the hill was in fact a giant burial mound constructed to honour a Celtic leader of high importance. Other than that, they had no idea as to what they might find.

Only a few hours into their new task, stripping away the topsoil in preparation for a large, square excavation from above, one of the workers cursed as his iron shovel struck stone with an arm-jarring clang. Catherine, under the shade of a canvas sheet
heard the sound – and the blasphemous cursing of the digger that followed. She had been noting her reasons for changing the direction of the excavations and dropped the journal on a small camp table, hurrying over to the man rubbing his elbow.

Staring down at the area he had removed to a depth of six inches she caught her breath. The stone the shovel had struck was not of any kind she had seen in the surrounding countryside. Although its highly polished surface was now dulled, she did not have to be a geologist to recognise it as marble.

‘Mr O’Connell,’ she said breathlessly, attempting to keep her excitement under control, ‘please be very careful with your spade. I would suggest that you use a trowel to scrape around the rest of the stone.’

Under her vigilant scrutiny the two men now knelt to begin the tedious task of scraping the soil away from the stone. It appeared that O’Connell, a big, raw-boned man in his late thirties, had struck the edge of what slowly revealed itself as a slab of polished, dark – almost black – marble. So engrossed were the three huddled around the excavation that they did not hear the Irish priest’s approach.

‘God in His heaven!’ Eamon exclaimed as he leant over their shoulders to peer at the rectangular slab revealed beneath the earth. It was as long as a tall man and about the same width. ‘I think it’s of Roman origin.’

Catherine glanced up at him from where she knelt, startled. ‘But it cannot be,’ she said, a note of confusion in her voice. ‘The Romans did not come to this part of Ireland.’

Eamon knelt beside her. Taking his spectacles from his nose, he wiped them with the hem of his cassock before replacing them to peer more closely at the stone. O’Connell had wiped the surface lightly with water and cloth and now the stone sparkled in the early summer sunlight.

‘I have seen a similar artefact in the excavations at Pompei whilst I was assisting on a dig there,’ he said with awe as his fingers stroked the wet surface. ‘But even then we traced that marble to an earlier era of Etruscan civilisation.’

‘If you were right, Eamon, how would you explain this?’

The priest frowned. He stood and gazed from the top of the hill to the grey sea beyond the village.

‘The Vikings came in their longships to this coast a thousand years ago,’ he reflected quietly. ‘They had contact with the Byzantine Empire and there is a possibility that the stone came here via that contact.’

‘Could the stone be of Norse origin?’ Catherine asked but the priest shook his head.

‘It is marble and that is not a medium they used,’ he replied. ‘I suspect that, as we excavate deeper, we will find that the slab is supported on a base. If my observations prove correct then I suspect that we have unearthed an unholy work of the devil.’

As Catherine glanced up at Eamon she could see the concern on his face. ‘An altar,’ she murmured. ‘An altar of human sacrifice.’

The priest met her eyes. ‘Yes. An altar of great rarity,’ he reflected. ‘I have seen only one other. It was in the excavations at that terrible place of human
depravity, Pompei. I had access to a section that had been sealed off from the curious who came to tour the petrified city. There were orders from the Vatican that the public should not see what we had unearthed. It was thought that the revelations of man’s most debased practices should be best left unrecorded and I saw why. The images on the walls of the room where the altar was found have haunted me still. It was a place of the devil himself. A bestial place of despair.’

The two workmen shifted uneasily as they listened to the priest relate his experiences in the ancient Roman city and they crossed themselves superstitiously.

Catherine returned her gaze to the polished marble slab and touched its surface with her fingertips. What horrors had this mysterious stone witnessed? And how did it come to be so far from another place and culture? ‘We are only assuming,’ she said softly as she stroked the smooth stone under her fingers, ‘that this is an altar such as the one you saw at Pompei.’

‘It is,’ he answered in a flat voice. ‘But I am sure further excavation will testify to my observation.’

By late afternoon he was proved right.

The workmen had gone home to the village leaving the young woman and older priest alone on the hill. The altar was now revealed for the first time in unknown centuries, the Roman writing engraved on the two square pillars supporting the black marble slab confirming Eamon’s educated guess as to its origins. The engraved Latin writing was well preserved.

‘Remarkable,’ Eamon sighed, standing back to admire what had been unearthed. ‘It has suffered no damage over the centuries. Not a chip out of it. It’s as if it had been buried only yesterday.’

‘It will certainly cause ripples in academic circles,’ Catherine mused beside him. ‘How will historians explain its presence in Ireland?’

‘Perhaps they will be as mystified as we are, but I tend to think the stone may have been brought by the Vikings. For what earthly reason I cannot even dare a guess. It is something very much out of place. But if there is one thing I sense it is this stone is something unholy. Something that we should rebury.’

‘That is silly superstition, Eamon,’ Catherine chided. ‘It is a valuable find, meriting a significant place in Irish history, no matter what your priestly feelings about good and evil.’

The expression on Eamon’s face was immovable. ‘During the third century before the birth of Our Lord the Romans imported many Egyptian and Middle Eastern religions. During the Second Punic War one of the imported religions was called upon against the famed Carthigian, Hannibal, to drive him from Italy. The Romans deferred to some works known as the Sibyline Books for inspiration. The books prophesied victory for the Romans only if they gave homage to the Great Mother cult of Asia Minor. And so a black meteorite symbolising the goddess was brought from Pessinus in Anatolia and paraded through the streets of Rome. The old goddess of Asia Minor was given a Roman
name, Cybele, and her priests were known as the Galli. Such were the excesses – even by Roman standards – of the priests that Roman law soon forbade membership to the religion. The priests had a nasty habit of going into a frenzy and castrating themselves while playing exotic music and dancing. Despite such bizarre rituals, the religion grew popular, particularly in the second century A.D. Those Romans who were to be initiated into the religion would descend into a pit that had a wooden grate overhead. A bull would be brought over the top of the grate and slaughtered. Its blood would pour onto the initiates below.’

‘Hardly evil considering the excesses of Romans at that time,’ Catherine said quietly. ‘I have read of worse things practised in the arena, Eamon.’

The priest removed his glasses to polish the lenses. It was his way of delaying an answer. ‘Ah, but the religion did not end there,’ he finally replied. ‘More was revealed in the murals in that place of evil I visited. It seems the Galli also had a secret practice of subjecting young women to a perverse form of initiation. One that I am reluctant to even discuss.’

‘It had something to do with the bulls,’ Catherine said.

The priest nodded. ‘Not only the bulls but also other animals,’ he continued quietly. ‘They believed that the seed of the animal would give the woman’s future child the virtues of that animal: the strength of the bull, the courage of the wolf and so on. Even leopards were used.’

Catherine was aghast. She was familiar with the
mating of animals as she had grown up in the country. But the thought of a woman coupling with a bull was beyond her imagination.

‘But how . . .?’ she whispered in her horror.

The priest knew exactly what she was thinking. ‘It seems a frame would be erected over the altar and the bull’s organ would only be allowed a short distance inside the woman. How they did this we are not sure. Nor do we wish to know. It is the perversity of the devil.’

‘And you think this altar was used for such practices?’

‘That would be a reasonable assumption, given its similarity to the one I saw and the accompanying Latin inscriptions I have deciphered,’ he answered as he replaced his spectacles. ‘So the stone has been corrupted in the eyes of Our Lord and this place is one of evil. Some places should not be interfered with by mere mortals,’ the priest sighed as he continued. ‘I think this is such a place. I think we should discontinue our excavations and bury what we have found.’

‘No, Eamon,’ Catherine said defiantly, turning on him. ‘This is too valuable an archaeological find to simply bury for another thousand years or so. I intend to continue.’

‘Then you do so without me, Catherine. I fear my soul would be in jeopardy should I assist you in discovering whatever other secrets this godforsaken place may reveal.’

‘You are a learned man, Eamon,’ she persisted. ‘You know that such things as this altar and what
it once meant are all part of man’s heritage . . . his history. You know how important this find is.’

The priest shook his head and stared down at the altar. ‘My search is over,’ he said softly. ‘I found that which I sought when the stone was unearthed. I found that I am as superstitious as my parishioners who, in my arrogance, I always felt superior to. Now I think that I am no better than they.’ He shuddered although the afternoon was warm. ‘I have a strong sense of an evil here that is almost tangible. If you persist then that evil may possess your very soul, Catherine.’

Catherine was unmoved. ‘If you have decided to abandon the dig then that is your decision, but I cannot understand why you should.’

‘I am sorry, Catherine, but you should consider reburying the altar,’ he said, and made his way to the path that had been worn up the side of the mound. ‘I will bid you good day and hope you see reason in what I have suggested.’

Catherine watched as Eamon disappeared beneath the crest of the hill and reappeared some minutes later, trudging with his head down across the field of marigolds. The sun was on the horizon and a cool breeze lifted the hem of her long dress, revealing her ankles. She gave the altar a final glance before she too turned to walk down the hill towards the house. Brett Norris was arriving that evening from London and she had not seen him in six weeks.

As she walked through the field of flowers her thoughts were in turmoil. Ahead of her was a meal with a man she did not think she loved. Behind her
was a mysterious hill that had not given up all its secrets.

The trout served with fresh vegetables was excellent. So too was the wine that accompanied the main course. But Catherine picked at her meal listlessly, and Brett Norris wondered at her lack of enthusiasm even when relating her discovery of the altar. He had expected that she would have been bubbling with excitement but this had not been so and he was baffled by her mood.

Catherine sat at the opposite end of the highly polished table deep in thought. The flickering candles highlighted her beautiful features as well as the pale, smooth skin above her dress, expensive and low cut, that clung to her shoulders. She had at least dressed to please him and Norris could feel his desire rising. Although she ate sparingly he did notice that she had filled her glass more than once with the claret he had brought with him from England.

‘My trip to London was very successful,’ Norris said lightly, by way of opening a conversation. ‘The war in Africa has been a God sent opportunity for record profits this year in our iron foundries. Not to mention the need for arms.’

Catherine glanced up at him through the candlelight. ‘I’m pleased to hear that someone is doing well out of the war,’ she responded with an edge of sarcasm. ‘Although I doubt that the soldiers would appreciate how good the war is for business.’

‘Damn it, woman!’ he exploded. ‘I was trying to
snap you out of your truculent mood. I haven’t seen you in over six weeks and I had hoped that you would have been happy to see me.’

‘When you make statements about how good the war is for your profits you cannot expect me to be sympathetic,’ Catherine flared. ‘Men from this village are fighting and dying on both sides over there. How can you expect me to react in any other way?’

‘You are thinking about your damned husband, aren’t you?’ he said in a quiet but accusing tone. ‘You are thinking about a man you don’t even love anymore. Or am I wrong?’

‘That is not the point,’ she answered firmly. ‘Naturally I am fond of Patrick in a way I don’t expect you to understand. He is the father of my children.’

‘Then you are welcome to return home to Sydney any time you wish. I will not force you to stay, no matter how much your leaving would break my heart.’

She stared into his eyes searching for insincerity but saw none. ‘I’m sorry, Brett,’ she said softly. ‘It’s just that . . . I don’t know what is wrong with me at the moment. Possibly it is because Eamon has withdrawn his services from the dig. I relied on his knowledge so much. And I do worry about Patrick despite all that has occurred between us. It is only natural to worry when one reads the casualty lists in the paper every morning. I know what sort of man he is. He does not value his own life as much as that of others. He is the sort of person who is likely to take great risks in the war.’

‘I know you, Catherine,’ Brett snarled. ‘I know you thrive in the company of powerful men like myself. I remember all those years ago when, in this very house, you clung to me rather than that pompous officer. Do you remember what I said then?’