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direction – no great task so far since the road from London to Salisbury was clearly enough marked, and at this time of year there were plenty of groups moving both ways. For this last stage in our progress, when we were wandering a little off the beaten track, Master Sincklo had taken care to establish our precise route before we left the Angel.
    Our walking group split into contingents fore and aft of the wagon. The younger ones tended to stride ahead and the older and wiser to lag behind, at least in the day’s beginning. So I frequently found myself in the van with my friend Jack Wilson.
    This sunny morning I teased and twitted him about his desertion of me on the previous evening and he took it all in good part. In truth, I wasn’t too troubled. At the cost of a few cuts and bruises, I’d made the acquaintance of a Justice of the Peace and his dark-haired daughter, been soothed by her healing hands, and been told that we were likely to meet again. That, combined with the prospect of the special performance which we were to give in a few days’ time, gave a glow to the midsummer morning. The view ahead was fair. I even took a quiet pleasure in being back among hills and dales after an extended stay in the city. Not that I’d ever admit to it of course . . .
    “Hills and dales” wasn’t exactly the right description of the terrain we were crossing. The land to the north of Salisbury is high, flat and bare. It is curiously dotted with mounds and long low shapes, as though the earth were a green quilt pulled over an ill-made bed. The sky is huge. Overhead sing the invisible larks while clouds of butterflies and other tiny summer creatures dance attendance on you.
    Jack nudged me and said “Look”, and I thought at first he was trying to distract me from mocking him. But then my eyes followed his pointing finger and I stopped dead in my tracks. Several hundred paces away to our right there stood a great pile of stones. In the morning sun, they reared up like the dark ribs of a giant’s house or lay on the ground as if that same giant had tossed them carelessly aside as unsuitable for his purpose. Some of them, with upright posts and lintels laid haphazard on top and the sky visible between, were constructed like titanic doorways. Gazing longer at these mighty stones, I realized they were arranged in a kind of circle: this was no chance collection but one put there for a purpose, and by a race of beings which was mightier than any in our current fallen world. I grew a little afraid in the openness of the plain, until I heard a laugh from the wagon which had by now drawn level with Jack and me.
    “You know what those are?”
    It was Richard Sincklo sitting up beside Will Fall. Serious, reserved Richard seemed amused at my amazement.
    “No,” I said. “I have never seen anything like it.”
    “I first passed this way many years ago,” said Master Sincklo. “I too wondered at the standing stones.”
    He looked round. By now, the whole band, near enough twenty of us, had gathered round to hear Master Sincklo’s explanation.
    “They say,” he said, “that those stones were brought from Ireland by Merlin the wizard in the time of King Arthur.”
    “Why?” said someone.
    “To commemorate those who had fallen in a battle,” said Sincklo.
    “So they do,” said someone else.
    “It’s a story that will do as well as any other,” said Richard Sincklo, clapping Master Fell on the shoulder as a signal to prod Flem into motion once more. Our little caravan moved on.
    I stayed behind for a moment to stare at the stone circle. I didn’t altogether believe Sincklo’s explanation, but I didn’t disbelieve it either. During the time of King Arthur, many extraordinary things had fallen out in this realm. At that moment, a cloud flew across the sun and darkened the stones further. Now they looked like teeth.
    I shivered slightly, and ran on to join my fellows.
    But that was not the end of the morning’s strange