Читать книгу The Golden Strangers - Henry Treece - Страница 10

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Inside the gates of the village, Brach ran into a man she hated. It was the one who had tried to put Marrag on the hill when her father was away. He was a sullen man who bore a grudge against all who seemed to do better than he; those who could find kindling in the cold times; those whose flints snapped off sharply to form an arrow edge at the first stroke; those whose skinning-knife slid over the pelt, shearing away fat and gristle without going through on to the hairy side and making a hole. He hated other men and women to do these things. When he saw them happen, his head bobbed up and down and his eyes went red, and he muttered angrily. Then he would go away and punch his clenched fist at the wall of a hut until the blood came. He was a violent strong man, who dreamed each night that he was a great warrior chieftain. Yet so uncertain was his temper and his courage, that Garroch had never yet asked him to carry axe and shield. And this also was a bitter burden to his mind.

So, when Brach ran into him, full-tilt, he caught hold of her since no one was in the compound, and remembered how she had kicked him in the mouth when he begged for mercy once.

His senses left him for a moment and he put his hand over her mouth and tried to drag her to a place he knew, under the stockade where kindling was stacked and it was dark and unvisited.

Brach bit his palm hard, but not too hard, only hard enough to make him let go. She knew this man and suddenly she saw that he could help her. She did not want to lose her father to the seal-woman; nor did she want this man to drag her among the damp wood and furze and hurt her.

‘Warrior,’ she gasped, calling him by a name which she knew he would like, ‘Warrior, you would be a fool to hurt me. I can tell you a secret.’

The man stopped rubbing his bitten palm angrily on his backside and changed his grip on her, so that she could talk but not run away.

‘Speak quickly,’ he said, ‘for I have two scores to settle with you.’

Brach’s words flowed from her in her fear: ‘Men have been unkind to you, warrior,’ she said. ‘They have not praised you as they should.’

He nodded: this child has sense, he thought, although she had treated him badly herself.

‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘or I will break your thumbs.’

She did not need his inducement. ‘Since you deserve a chieftain’s pleasures, I tell you,’ she said. ‘My father means to visit Rua Fish tonight. It seems she is greater than we thought. If you will let me go, I will see to it that Garroch my father does not go. And then you can go in his place, into her house, into her bed. What of that?’

The man thought for a moment and then his thin face wrinkled with a sour and bitter smile.

‘That is good,’ he said, ‘to despoil a chieftain! Yes, that is good.’

‘Can I go now?’ said Brach.

He loosed one of her hands. ‘Do you swear that Garroch will not find me there?’ he asked.

Brach said, ‘May the worm live in my mouth and the snake come inside me in the dark!’

‘That is good enough for me,’ said the man, letting go of her other hand. ‘I shall go there tonight.’

Brach stood some paces away from him.

‘Let her think you are Garroch,’ she said, suddenly remembering her oath to the frightening seal-woman. ‘If you do not do that, she will swallow you whole and spit out the bones at the next barley sowing.’

Then she ran swiftly to her mother’s house, half-afraid, half-laughing.

So that night, Rua did not sleep alone on her sheepskins. She heard the hands and knees along the dark tunnel and put out the fat-lamp so that Garroch should not feel ashamed at having to come to her and surrender at last.

She placed herself for him, holding her breath with fearful expectation, and was momentarily astonished at the roughness of this prince. Not even the most savage of her father’s fishers had been like this.

And then she ceased to compare critically in the urgency of the repeated occasions. Life was short, she thought, as she lay on her side for a moment before the next wave thundered to her shore. There is always pain while life lasts, she thought. But there are differences in pain, she thought. And then her speculations were interrupted yet again.

The cattle were already lowing outside when they both knew that this night must end for them.

‘Garroch,’ she said, burying her hands in his hair and pulling at him in farewell.

He broke away laughing, leaving his hair. He was some time finding the way out of her house. She heard his smothered laughter as he crawled away from her along the low tunnel, and she wondered what could have been amusing in that night.

Yet, when she lit the fat lamp again, she partly understood. The strands of hair in her fingers were grey and short, not like his hair, long and as black as the night sky.

Weeping as bitterly as a child whose clay doll has been broken by a laughing boy, Rua curled up on the hard floor and slept into yet another vision of revenge.

So Rua suffered: but before she woke again, she knew what she must do. Earth Mother had come to her in the dream, a shapeless hairy thing, all glistening with dark dew, and had told her, seeming to gloat as she spoke, in her thick furry voice that was somehow as hard as a stone.