Читать книгу The Golden Strangers - Henry Treece - Страница 11

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At the time of village gathering, when the folk assembled in the compound to await the Old Man, who always said the charm which helped them in their work—fuel-getting, flint-knapping, weaving or herding—Rua Fish came quickly out of her house and stood in the only place they allowed her, near to the stockade gate by the midden ditch.

Already the sun’s heat, which shone alike upon barley and refuse, was growing and the stench from the open middens made Rua feel sick. She began to wish that the Old Man would come soon, not that she wanted to see him. It was Garroch she waited for, and she knew that he would come out of the hut and walk across the beaten earth compound with his ailing father, whose eyes and ears and voice he had become since the return from the Fisherfolk.

Rua still trembled with fury at the thought of the trick they had played on her, Brach and her father. They had sent a stranger to her, to use her in laughter, like some worthless thing. She glanced round at the older men as they stood waiting, wondering which one of them had lain with her so savagely. But it was impossible to tell: there were so many whose hair, like that she had clutched in her fingers, was greying. In this village men seemed to grow old very quickly, she thought. And all the women seemed to have their broods of children when they were little more than children themselves. Then they grew very fat and shapeless and waddled about screaming, with their greasy black hair always escaping its bone pins and falling about their shoulders.

Then the bull’s horn sounded and the hum of voices was stilled. Marrag came up the steps, leaning on a thick white staff. He was pale and kept talking back over his shoulder querulously at his son, who walked behind him, his dark and noble head bowed.

When they reached the thickest of the folk, Marrag stopped and looked round at his people absently, as though he wondered who they were and what they were doing, staring and nodding to him like that.

Garroch whispered in the Old Man’s ear and then gently slid out the Chieftain’s sacred black flint knife to make the blessing sign. With a quick stroke, he drew a circle in the air and cut across it three times, as Marrag used to do.

‘Go your ways in peace,’ he said, in a loud clear voice, ‘for Earth Mother smiles on you today.’

Rua felt the blood beat in her head. She flung back her chin and throwing the robe from her with a wild movement of her arms shouted, ‘This Garroch is a liar! What does he know of Earth Mother’s face?’

There was a sudden horrified gasp from the People of the Hill. They turned to stare at her in fear, almost expecting something hunched and shambling to come out of the midden pit behind her and drag her down red and screaming.

Garroch’s face had turned white and ghastly, the knife trembling in his hand now. Marrag was shaking his white head petulantly and turning from side to side. ‘What is it?’ he was saying. ‘Who spoke then! I cannot see.’

Only that rebellious man who had lain with Rua in the night seemed to find any delight in this awful occasion. He called out derisively, ‘Let the Fish Woman say what she knows. Perhaps Earth Mother has been to her in the night, who can tell?’

Rua ignored him and spoke out in a loud voice:

‘Earth Mother sends Garroch a challenge. Garroch has grown too proud, she says. Let Garroch go out and prove to the People of the Hill that he is fit to be the voice of the Old Man, Marrag.’

Like a man in a trance, Garroch made a pace forward, towards her.

‘I am afraid of nothing,’ he said. ‘Earth Mother knows that.’

Rua laughed harshly. Then she pointed her long finger at him, between the eyes.

‘Yes, Garroch is afraid of one thing,’ she said. ‘He is afraid of Hair Wolf!’

And Garroch started and bit his lip for the woman was speaking the truth. Of all the creatures and the men, of hill and forest and shore, Hair Wolf was the only one he feared, though he had never told his fear to any man.

Rua’s quick eyes told her that she had found the mark. Her heart rejoiced.

‘Go out today, Garroch the Chief’s son,’ she cried, ‘and show Earth Mother that you are fit to be the voice of Marrag. Bring back Hair Wolf and lay him by her stone, then we shall believe you!’

Now, by the muttering about him, Garroch knew that he must do as she said if he was ever to lead the People of the Hill. He raised his head and stared Rua in the eye. She looked back at him without flinching, so great was her vengeance towards him. ‘I will go,’ he said, ‘but we have a law here that only the Old Man or his voice must speak the messages of Earth Mother. So, in judgment on you now, I tell you that when I come down the hill again tonight, with Hair across my shoulders, you too must join him on the great stone. That is the law.’

He turned and walked back to Marrag, leading him to the house. Garroch must make ready for the hunt.

As they dragged Rua away to set her under guard until Garroch returned with his kill, she shouted after the young Chieftain, ‘Take witnesses to see that you do not bring back a wolf that had died of old age!’

Garroch turned at the door of the house, his thin lips twisted grimly. ‘I shall take a hunting party of six. They will be my witnesses. Under our law, if I do not kill my quarry, they must kill me. You may rest content, Fish Woman, until I return.’

They flung her into the darkness again. The one who had been with her the night before was set before her door, with his axe, as her guard. He called in to her that he must break her skull if she tried to come out again before they fetched her to lie on the Stone.

And something in his voice stirred a strange raw chord in Rua’s memory and suddenly she was sure that this was the man who had betrayed her and his Chieftain.

She groped among her few belongings and found the sharp bone needle. She felt its point carefully in the darkness. It was very keen. For a moment she almost thought of calling this man in to her: if she stood above the little tunnel, she could put the needle down through his neck or shoulders while he was still on his knees in the dark. But she changed her mind again. She would not use it on him unless he came into the hut of his own wishing. No one could blame her for that.

In Marrag’s great house, Garroch prepared himself for the hunting of Hair Wolf. His shiny hair, that must never be cut, he pushed through a long hollow bone and knotted it, to keep it out of the way. Then he wrapped narrow strips of horsehide round and round his forearms, and a broader strip about his belly and up between his legs. He wore his bears’ claw necklace and white bones through his ear lobes. His running shoes were of light calfskin. And when he was ready, Marrag painted the red streaks of ochre and the black streaks of charcoal across his face and lengthwise down his body and thighs.

He took up his long-bladed greenstone axe and light wicker shield and stood in the doorway, laughing now.

Soon the villagers watched the small dark men streaming along the hilltop, with the sun on their bodies. They ran lightly, like questing animals themselves, their axes held slightly forward. Their vicious shadows followed them, moving along the slope of the hill.

Brach was proud and afraid at the same time. When her father and his men had vanished over the hill, she ran swiftly to the Old Woman Stone, to beg her not to let Hair kill Garroch that day at least.

Old Marrag did not pray or weep: he slept, leaning against the clay-wall, dreaming of his youth.