STAGS 5 by M A Bennett

Author:M A Bennett
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781471408717
Publisher: Bonnier Publishing Fiction
Published: 2022-05-20T15:46:54.355000+00:00

23

I went straight back to my tower, as I wasn’t hungry for lunch after those doorstep sandwiches.

I also didn’t fancy getting changed and running the gauntlet of a posh lunch in the Great Hall, with all the sticky conversations with my would-be killers. There’s nothing like your own impending murder to suppress your appetite.

As Henry had recommended, I forced myself to rest. I lay down in my clothes, but I knew instinctively that I wouldn’t be able to nap. I went on my phone for a bit, and as there was no Wi-Fi I had to content myself with the films I’d already downloaded while in civilisation. But, as always, I found movies a bit too stimulating to get to sleep. I was conscious of that thing teachers always tell you, about the ‘blue light’ of screens keeping you awake. What I needed was something less Savage. Something boring and Medieval.

I needed a book.

In a moment I was up again. I trod quietly down my staircase, the stone cold beneath my bare feet, to the library where I’d eaten with Henry last night.

Luckily there was no one in the vast room, and I quickly scanned the gold-tooled titles for something positive-sounding. I didn’t want any bad dreams. One title jumped out at me:

THE GOLDEN BOUGH

by

SIR JAMES GEORGE FRAZER

That sounded ideal: cheerful but dull. I grabbed the book and raced back upstairs with it.

Back on my bed I began to read, to find it was some weird old tome about comparative religions and spooky traditions. I idly flicked through, bypassing stories of corn gods and ancient rites. Then fragments of text jumped out at me – ‘Highlands of Scotland’, ‘ancient heathendom surviving in our own country’, ‘sacrifices were offered in the open air, frequently on the tops of hills’.

Now I was wide awake all right. I stopped, heart thudding, then read on.

When the time came the victims were sacrificed by the druids or priests. Some they shot down with arrows, some they impaled, and some they burned alive in the following manner. Colossal images of wicker-work or of wood and grass were constructed; these were filled with live men, cattle and animals of other kinds; fire was then applied to the images, and they were burned with their living contents.

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