Читать книгу The Golden Strangers - Henry Treece - Страница 5

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Two-fingers stood on the bare chalk hilltop, black as a stone against the red sun. He was quite still. Even the clay beads on the thong round his neck had stopped clinking against each other. He was listening, his thin dark face screwed up like an otter’s, his broad nostrils opening and shutting as though he might find the scent he wanted, wanted and feared, if only he tried hard enough.

Then it came to him like a harsh slap in the face, and he knew. ‘Hair! Hair!’ he said to himself, for in his village below the hill no man must ever name a wolf. That would be the quickest way to bring them howling round the stockade at night.

He reached down to his cowhide belt for the polished greenstone axe with his right hand. Then he remembered and dragged the axe out with his left. His right hand was only a finger and a thumb, barely healed yet, and they would not hold an axe. It had happened only recently, the adder-bite, when he was gathering red berries, and did not see the coiling creature till it had bitten him. He was not used to it yet, just a thumb and a finger. As he grasped the axe, he recalled the Old Man curing him of the bite. His arm was swollen and red in long streaks when they found him. The Old Man made them hold him down while he did what had to be done with his keen black-flint knife. Two-fingers did not remember it all. But he remembered someone screaming, and then he was home again, in his mother’s house under the stockade. The Old Man made a paste with the three fingers and tied it to his swollen arm with strips of flax cloth. Two-fingers was able to walk and talk again when three moons had come and gone. He was grateful to the Old Man. That must have been strong magic. Now he must repay the Old Man and tell him quickly about Hair.

Below him the little sheep nibbled at the short wiry grass. They had smelled nothing. Nor had the two young dogs who lay beside them. Two-fingers was angry with the dogs for not smelling Hair. He thought of hitting them, on their heads, just hard enough, with the axe, but then he remembered they were little more than puppies and did not know much as yet. The Old Man had asked for their mother, the trained bitch, at the time of fires, before snow-falling. She went into the big fire, with the other animals. There was a baby in the same fire; one from a young man’s house, too poor yet to own animals. Two-fingers thought how lucky that man was, not to lose a trained sheepdog, as he had done. Yet the fire was a success, for the snows came and went quickly, and the Old Man was right. He had guided his people through the dark-year once more and into the light.

Two-fingers drew out a little bone whistle, carved with bulls and stags. It was very old—older than the People of the Hill. His father had found it deep in the dank moss of the oak forest that swirled below the hill, about the river. Two-fingers only used it on special occasions like this, for he was afraid to waste its magic by blowing through it too often. It was made by the early folk, he knew, and they were powerful spirits. Now he blew it gently and the two dogs sprang silently into action, as though wakened from sleep, jostling the puzzled sheep down the hill.

Two-fingers followed, looking fearfully over his shoulder from time to time, lest Hair was behind him. He wondered whether to drive the sheep over the hill’s shoulder to the next one, where the village had its great earthwork corral, protected with rampart and ditch. But perhaps there would not be time. He hurried on, turning his head away from the Long House that suddenly loomed out of the dusk, a fearsome hunchbacked thing. This was the place of long silence, where the most important of the People of the Hill went, back into the womb of Earth Mother, to lie in their rows, painted with bright red ochre to represent the blood of birth. Its stone entrance seemed to yawn at him and he struck himself hard on the temple with the antler shaft of the axe, as a gesture to Earth Mother. She let him pass on safely down the hill, so he knew that she was not too angry with him.

An owl started from a gorse bush and Two-fingers was almost sick with fright. At first he thought it was the man they had put at the bottom of the mine-shaft when they sank the new cutting for flint. His bones were still there and each miner touched them when he climbed down the notched tree-trunk in the morning on his way to work. That ensured a good day in the curving, treacherous galleries where the hard keen flints were dug with the antler picks. Two-fingers barely remembered the man being put down there to bring luck, but he was always afraid of the place.

Then his quick steps brought him to the last slope before the stockade. In his haste he almost passed the great, leaning stone, which they called ‘The Old Woman’ because of the two lumps which stuck out from it. He shuddered to think what might happen if he ever did forget, and ran back to bruise his jaw against the hard mossy surface before passing on. That was the law; all villagers must do that by night and by morning. Only the sick did not do it and they soon died, which was a proof of its importance.

‘Forgive me, Mother,’ he said, and then ran after the little sheep, who were already rubbing themselves against the oaken stockade.

He had expected everyone to be excited when he shouted ‘Hair!’ as they swung the heavy gate wide for him to enter. But they only smiled in their dark slow way, and nodded as though it happened every day. Some of the women, the younger ones, even tapped their foreheads and then shrugged their shoulders.

Two-fingers felt hurt. One of the men he spoke to shared a field with him. They had worked together, breaking that hard land with their pointed sticks and singing the Barley Song that would bring good crops:

‘Spring quickly, Barley Woman,

There is blood in the furrows to feed you!’

But this man only shrugged his shoulders like the women and stood aside.

Puzzled, Two-fingers almost ran towards the Old Man’s warren. It was a cluster of huts, set about a bigger central one, connected to it by dry-stone passages through which a man might crawl on all-fours. The roofs reached high about a central kingpost, roughly thatched and pointed. Two-fingers ran towards the biggest one, where light from the fat-lamps glowed.

The chief’s proud young son, Garroch, met him at the curving doorway, pushing him hard against the wind-break and sticking a sharp flint knife against his throat.

‘There are strangers,’ he said. ‘Old Man must have quiet.’

But Two-fingers would not be silent.

‘Hair! Hair is on the hill!’ he yelled.

The talking in the house died down, then there was a little scurry of laughter. The Old Man had three proud wives who always made fun of the tribesmen like that.

A deep voice said, ‘Come in, Two-fingers, and tell us about Hair then.’

The shepherd broke free and ran into the great circular room. The light from the chalkstone lamps with their rush wicks was dim and the smoke from the fat-oil sent whorls of greasy blackness into the air. But Two-fingers saw, all the same, that strangers had come. He counted seven of them, squatting on their haunches before the Old Man. He could not wait to inspect them then, but ran forward and knocked his forehead before the Old Man, who sat serenely, draped with his ceremonial robe of deerhide and wearing his thick black hair, that must never be cut, piled upon his head with bone pins, on the slate stool that had been fetched so far from the sunset for him.

Two-fingers pretended to ignore the women who squatted behind the chief, giggling at him and shaking their jet ear-rings and bone-bracelets as they pointed derisively, but he saw their plump pale breasts moving as they laughed.

‘Hair is here on the hill, Old Man!’ he began.

The Old Man smiled and shook his head. ‘Perhaps Hair can wait, Two-fingers,’ he said, taking the man’s wrists in his strong hands so that the power flowed into him and made him silent. ‘We must show our visitors something else than Hair.’

The Old Man called to a slave girl who stood waiting with a wicker basket full of barley-bread for the guests. She flung a barley cake on to the earthen floor beside Two-fingers. The Old Man leaned forward and swiftly drew a circle about the little loaf with the point of the black flint knife, the one Two-fingers knew so well, the magic knife.

‘Take up the cake, friend,’ he said to the shepherd. ‘Eat with us now.’

Two-fingers felt proud that the Chief should invite him and tried to take the cake. But something always seemed to push against his hand, something soft and furry, forcing it away from the bread and back over the circle. Behind him he heard a faint laugh.

‘I cannot reach it, Old Man,’ he said at last, a small tear in his eyes.

The Old Man smiled and smoothed out the circle with his foot. Two-fingers grabbed out for the cake again. The furry thing had gone. It was easy now and he sat with the cake in his mouth, looking wide-eyed at the strangers, inspecting them for the first time.

They were all big men, much bigger than any he had ever seen, even the Hunters. But only two of them frightened him. One wore the horns of a stag and a horses’ hide about his thin body. His face was thickly daubed with white clay, but his eyes were big and blue. Two-fingers had never seen blue eyes before, nor such a necklace of little skulls, of birds and weasels and even of the cat. The other man was broad-shouldered and fat. His belly hung over his belt. His hair was golden and spread about his back. On his head he wore a round shiny thing that gleamed almost red in the lamplight. His thick body was clothed in linen, which Two-fingers knew, but coloured red and green in little squares. He had not seen that before. Nor had he seen such a knife as this man wore on his coral-studded bullhide belt. It glistened like a dull fire as he moved. Two-fingers would have liked to touch it, but dared not.

Then the Old Man said to the strangers, ‘You have seen some of my magic. Now let me show you more.’

He took Two-fingers by the nape of the neck and bent him forward, poking among his thick black hair. The Old Man’s fingers hurt, but Two-fingers kept still, proud to be shown off like this.

‘Feel here, and here,’ the Old Man said. ‘Here are the places where I let out a demon from his head many moons ago. Which of you could do that?’

Two-fingers felt their unbelieving fingers exploring the old wounds where the chief had scraped holes in the bone. He began to whimper for the pain was still there if anyone touched them, ever so gently. Sometimes it even came when he was asleep; then he cried in his dreams.

After they had felt his holes, they flung him backwards and he lay at the Old Man’s feet. The one wearing the horns said, ‘We who have come here in our boats have magic stronger than that. Your magic is weak. It is nothing.’

Two-fingers was surprised to find that he could understand the words this one spoke, though they were said differently, as though the man had a stone in his mouth.

The other in the coloured linen clothes nodded and said, ‘See this knife! It is so sharp that it will cut through this little man’s arm with one slash.’

He drew out the red knife and swung his arm upwards. Two-fingers shrank back, his eyes closed. But the blow did not fall. The Old Man was staring into the blue eyes of the visitor and he was smiling, his strange dark smile, the one he made when he drew his circles, or when he gave the chosen animals to the fire. He was thinking of Earth Mother, Two-fingers knew, and she was helping him, putting her magic in his eyes. The knife slowly fell.

Then the Old Man signed to one of the women. She hurried forward with the cow’s horns and the pot of barley beer. The strangers drank, afraid to anger this strange old man. And one by one they sank down on to the floor of the hut, sighing deeply and clutching at their bellies, a strange froth gathering about their lips, speechless.

Two-fingers smiled for he knew that they had drunk the foxglove poison without a murmur, so they couldn’t be very clever. Even he knew that trick.

Only the big one, their leader with the red knife, still sat upright, glaring silently at the Old Man, who was staring back at him, almost pleasantly. They waited for a while looking at each other like two hawks locked in a death-grip, but the man did not fall down like the others.

The Old Man said, ‘This is a strong one. Earth Mother would accept such a man. He would make good crops with this body.’

He whistled sharply and his sons came running in. It took six of the small dark ones to drag this great visitor through the stockade to the leaning stone, he was so heavy. But they bound him with strong thongs and the villagers stood in a circle, beating their foreheads, gravely, while the Old Man made the deep cut down his body and drew out the steaming heart for all to see.

The man’s helmet fell off his head as he jerked back with the cut, and the copper knife clattered on to the ground. No one seemed very interested in these things, except Two-fingers, who snatched up the little blade eagerly and not understanding its sharpness, sliced himself deep into the palm in his hurry.

The big golden man died quickly after that for the Old Man knew how it should go. But before he had suffered the big cut, this stranger man had groaned, ‘My brothers are coming in their boats. They bring horses and great hounds on their rafts. Their spears will pin you to the earth like foxes. They will come tomorrow, never fear.’ Then the blood came out of his mouth and he died.

The Old Man had laughed hoarsely and the villagers had imitated him, as was proper. Then they went back to the village.

Only Two-fingers, who was a little strange in the head, stayed by the Old Woman’s stone, wondering, the metal knife still in his hand. He already saw pictures of these golden men, the hill black with them, all with sharp knives and coloured clothes, and big booming voices, like the dead one on the stone.

He did not hear the Old Man call out, ‘Come, friend Two-fingers, now tell me about old Hair on the hill!’

He was thinking that these golden men might be more frightening than Hair. He wondered if he would be the first to see them, and shuddered.

Then he did not have time to think about them any more. Old Hair crept softly on him when the noisy villagers had gone away, and with a sudden scurrying rush took him by the soft throat in an almost unbreakable grip of hunger.

But Two-fingers had time to use the copper knife on Old Hair’s belly, and so two offerings lay on or about the stone, for Earth Mother to take her pick, before the moon went down. Two-fingers stayed bleeding on the ground until dawn. Then he crawled back to tell the Old Man all about it. But first he dropped the little copper knife down a deep fissure in the chalk as an offering to Earth Mother who had helped him so much that night.

So the golden strangers and the metal knife came and went, and were soon forgotten, like the death of a dog, or the splintering at last of an antler pick. There were other, harsher things to remember each year, as season created season in this dark island, famine and fire-times, visits from the hungry wolves or the savage Hunters from the dim woods. Death never moved too far away from the hill; the rank smell of his breath came to the villagers, even in their sleep.