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(back to page 6)
"I can understand," he said, "why you mightn't wish to disclose your plans in detail. But it isn't enough to hear your love of stone. You refuse to tell us anything else. Therefore, to protect ourselves in case you fail us on such an important enterprise, we should declare ourselves entitled to Recompense."
Recompense! A blood oath! Recompense was the payment for failure to deliver on a vow–and it guaranteed a slow, humiliating death. First the offender was pegged out like a hide to the hillside. There he lay for twenty-four hours. At noon on the next day a warrior came and cut off the offender's right arm at the shoulder; on the third day at noon, the left arm; slaves staunched the blood with mud leaves, and skins to prevent the offender bleeding mercifully to death. On the fourth day at noon the warriors cut off the right leg; at the fifth noon, the left.
On the sixth day at noon they prized out his eyes, sliced off his ears, pulled out his tongue; and on the seventh day they filleted his body like butchers. Some weeks later, when the wind and the rain had washed all the flesh from the skeleton, the whitening bones would be collected by the lowest bondswoman on the hillside and cast out into the countryside for the wild animals to gnaw. That was Recompense, a dreadful matter; the word chilled the spine of every man, woman, and child in Newgrange. All chatter, all murmuring, all noise, in the Long Room died. Every eye watched the clashing pair.
The Architect had seen the Recompense more than once; he had even been called upon to participate in it. At last he nodded slowly, like a man thinking aloud, and turned to face the people.
"I understand," he said. "But–if you, all of you, eventually agree that I have accomplished a satisfactory and eternal commemoration, then"–and he spun around to face the older man–"I will take your Elder's robe. And you'll pay the Recompense."
A soft roar came up from the people. This young man knew the laws of Newgrange. A person threatened with the Recompense had the right to turn it on his challenger, even an Elder. In the shocked hush, the Silken Elder had no choice.
"I agree," he said, soft-spoken but very angry.
He tried to recover his position a little, using all the powers of his silken voice.
"What can you tell us about how long–"
"I will tell you nothing," interrupted the Architect, and he left the Long House abruptly. The meeting broke up, and there wasn't a man or a woman there who didn't feel astounded.
From that moment, one September day fifty centuries ago, the Architect began to plan the great white circular building on the hillside at Newgrange above the river Boyne. And from that moment he knew that the Silken Elder would plot every day to cause his downfall and wreck his project, because any time a great man tries to do a wonderful thing, lesser men will try to stop him. That is one of the laws of life.
(This text ends on page 23 of the hardcover book.)
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