A Prince of Cornwall / A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex

by Charles W. Whistler

I set the point of my weapon to the stone and went to work, graving the upright stem of the cross first, thinking that Morfed would speak when he saw that I was indeed doing as he asked me. The stone was softer than I expected, and surely was not of the granite of the cliffs around, but had been brought from far, else I could not have marked it at all. Yet I had to lean heavily on my seax as I cut, and it was no light task, as I stood sidewise that I might not lose sight of Morfed.

"I die," he said presently. "There will be none left who may bring back the ancient secrets hither from the land of the Cymro. See, this is an end."

He rose up, staggering a little, and cast the golden sickle from him into the pool with a light eddying splash, as if it skimmed the surface ere it sank, but I did not look at it, and that was well for me. I saw his hand fly to his breast, as the hands of his men had gone for their weapons when they first saw us, and I knew what was coming.

Hardly had the golden toy touched the water when out flashed a long dagger from his robes, and he flew on me, thinking, no doubt, that I must needs turn my head to watch the fall of his sickle, and I was ready for him. He was no warrior, and his hand was too high, but he was a priest, and on him I would not use my weapon. I swung aside from him, striking up his arm, and his blind rush carried him against the menhir, so that the blow which was meant for me fell thereon, scoring the stone deeply; and lo! his own hand ended with that blow what I had begun, marking the cross-beam I had yet to make, so that the holy sign was complete.

And I saw that in a flash, even as he reeled back from the menhir and staggered. His foot splashed into the ooze of the bank and went down; and with that he lost his footing altogether and fell headlong into the pool, swaying as he went, across the front of the menhir.

Now there was a shout and the sound of hurrying footsteps behind me, but it was Howel's voice, and I did not turn. I leaned on the menhir to try to catch the white robes that swirled below me, and then I felt a heave and quaking in the turf on which I knelt as I reached over the black water, and Howel cried out and dragged me back roughly for a long fathom.

The menhir was falling. Slowly at first, and then more swiftly, it bent forward over the pool, and then it gathered way suddenly, and with a mighty crash it fell with all its towering height across it--and across the last flash of the white robes of the man who yet struggled therein.

For a moment the cross looked skyward, and then the wave swept over the stone, and it was gone into the unknown depths that maybe held so many secrets of the strange rites of those who had reared it. Only where its foot had been planted was a pit to shew that somewhat had been there, and that was slowly filling with the black bog which had undermined the stone at last. The old prophecy had come to pass, and there was indeed an end.

But I saw for a moment into that pit before it was filled, and in it was laid open as it were a great stone chest, where the base of the menhir had been to cover it, and in that were skulls and bones of men, and among them the dull gleam of ancient gold and flint.

The wild tumult of the water died away, and the ripples came, and then the pool was glassy as before, but there was no sign of movement in it, and now it was clear no longer. And still Howel and I stared silently at that place whence the great stone had passed like a dream.