To one side stood two dark tent-cabins. Heavy fabric stretched on steel frames. Beside them, squares of excavated peat were piled into tiny pyramids, ready to burn as heat for the cabins. But no one was here. During the winter months the site was abandoned due to the threat of heavy snow.

Still, it wasn't the dark campsite that drew everyone's attention. Gray stared into the center of the hollow. The excavation site was marked off with yellow survey strings that crisscrossed the area in a large grid. As if trapped in this string web, giant stones rose from the ground in a crude ring. Each one towered twice Gray's height. Atop one pair of stones lay a massive slab, forming a crude doorway into the circle.

Gray remembered Wallace's description of the Neolithic sites that dotted the region. Apparently he had found a new one, one lost for ages in this bog forest.

"Looks like a little Stonehenge," Kowalski said.

Wallace slid from his saddle and took his pony's lead in hand. "Only this site is older than Stonehenge. Much older."

They all dismounted. A rough sheltered paddock stood near the cabins, where they walked their ponies and set about unloading saddles and rubbing down their mounts. Kowalski fetched water from a nearby stream.

Wallace explained about the discovery, how clues found in the Domesday Book had led him here, to a place marked in Latin as "wasted." "I found no trace of the town itself. It must have been razed to the ground. But while hunting, I came upon this stone circle. It was half-buried in peat. An untrained eye could easily have mistaken it for ordinary boulders, especially as they were covered in lichen and moss. But the rocks were a type of bluestone not native to the fells."

His excitement grew as he talked. With the ponies settled, Wallace led them over to the stone ring. He carried his lantern. Gray also removed a flashlight from his saddlebag. As a group, they climbed over the survey strings and crunched through the ankle-deep snow. The stone ring sat in a square of excavated soil. Over the years, teams of archaeologists had been slowly digging the rocks free of the layers of peat.

"The stones were half-buried when I first stumbled here. Their monstrous weight sank them into the muck over the passing millennia."

"Millennia?" Rachel asked. "How old is the place?"

"I've dated it to two thousand years older than Stonehenge. That corresponds to the time of the first settlers to occupy the British Isles. To give you some perspective, that's a thousand years before the Great Pyramids were built."

As they reached the dark ring, Gray flashed his light toward the nearest stone. Cleared of moss and lichen, there was no doubt it was man-made. Crude petroglyphs had been etched into the side facing Gray. The carvings covered the entire exposed surface-but it was all the same motif.

"Spirals," Gray mumbled, drawing Rachel's attention.

She joined him, as did Wallace.

"A very common pagan symbol," the professor said. "Representing the soul's journey. This example is almost an exact replica of stone markings found at Newgrange, a pre-Celtic tomb complex in Ireland. Newgrange was dated to around 3200 B.C., about the same age as this ring, suggesting they were likely built by the same tribe of people."

"The Druids?" Kowalski asked.

Wallace scowled. "Och, where did you learn your history, young man? Druids were Celtic tribal priests. They didn't come onto the stage for another three thousand years." He waved an arm to encompass the Neolithic stone ring. "This is the handiwork of the earliest tribe to settle the British Isles, a people who were here long before the Celts and Druids."

Kowalski merely shrugged, taking no offense at this slight to his knowledge.

Wallace sighed. "But I guess I understand how most people make that mistake. The Celts revered this lost people, believed them to be gods, even incorporated that culture into their own. They worshiped at these old sites, folded them into their mythology, believing the ancient stones to be the home of their gods. In fact, what's considered to be high Celtic art today is based on these old pagan carvings. Ultimately, everything traces back to here." Wallace pointed to the towering henge stones. "But the bigger question remains, who were these ancient ring-builders?"

Gray sensed Wallace's excitement stoking higher. It looked like he had more to say, something that he was still holding back, ever the showman. But before he could continue, Rachel interrupted.

"You better see this."

She had circled to the far side of the stone and stood within the ring. Her arm pointed to the surface of the stone on that side.

Gray and the others stepped over the survey strings to join her. He lifted his flashlight. There was only a single symbol carved into the rock on that side. Turning, he shone his light across to the other standing stones-twelve in total, he noted. Each was marked with the same symbol.

"The quartered circle," Gray said.

Wallace nodded. "Now you know why I was so sure that the diary of that medieval scholar, Martin Borr, pointed straight here. The mark was drawn on his journal."

Gray turned in a slow circle.

What did it all mean?

Facing the first stone again, Gray contemplated its significance. Spirals on one side, a pagan cross on the other. He realized it was the same pattern as the two symbols burned into the leather satchel: a spiral on one side, a cross on the other.