Читать книгу The Golden Strangers - Henry Treece - Страница 7

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A long raw wind howled up the estuary from the grey sea over the broad green-slimed mudflats, until it reached the sand where the dug-out boats were drawn up, black under a low and leaden sky. The gaunt dog-toothed rocks which fringed the inlet stood a dirty white with the droppings of countless generations of sea-birds, whose cracked cries echoed and re-echoed from side to side of the gloomy place.

This was the spring settlement of the Fisherfolk to whom Garroch of the Hill had come, a princely beggar for food to keep his father’s people alive until the little barley shoots of Craig Dun had grown full enough for harvesting.

Garroch stood erect on a flat stone, trying to be proud, though the sand was hurting his eyes and the thick stench of rotting fish that came with the wind from the village middens made him screw up his nostrils. He was talking earnestly but with dignity, in the simple common language of the tribes, stressing his points as he made them with the white ‘talking stick’, a long spatula of deer-horn, the holding of which insured that the speaker would not be interrupted until he had finished and had passed the thing to the man who held up his forefinger as sign that he also had something to say.

‘My folk are waiting, Kraka,’ he said, sweeping the stick round behind him, where a score of men, as small and dark as their prince, squatted on a long ridge, their eyes never leaving their leader, though they were too far away from him to hear his words.

‘They have brought their baskets, four hands of them, for your shellfish. The Old Man of Craig Dun asks for it to keep his folk alive, Kraka.’

As he spoke Garroch’s eyes swept over the scene in contempt. He saw the miserable sheds that leaned against the ordured rocks, black with damp and rottenness, their Chief’s hovel perched on tottering wood-piles above the slime; and everywhere the broken shells and decaying fish-guts that fouled the air about this enclosed place.

Somewhere among the huts women were burning a great heap of seaweed. The stuff spurted and crackled, sending up its brown smoke to join the already overladen atmosphere.

Kraka the Fisher Chief lolled before Garroch, negligently, against the side of his great black dug-out boat, picking his yellow teeth with a thorn. His red-rimmed eyes never left the thin dark face of the visitor. His lips seemed perpetually to be twisted in a sneer. After all, it was Garroch who was begging for food, not Kraka! Garroch did not like Kraka’s smell. It was like that of a creature he did not know. Behind their chief, the Fisherfolk sat in the damp sand, their salt-cracked and blackened hands hanging down loosely over their knees, watching Garroch’s eyes and mouth for signs of fear; judging the worth of the boar’s tooth necklace at his throat; envying the brown bearskin cloak which covered his shoulders, the thick flax-linen tunic that shielded his body from their bitter wind.

At last Kraka held out his hand for the talking-stick. Garroch tossed it to him proudly, without a smile. For a moment Kraka grinned and scratched himself with it, in the middle of the back where the fingers will not reach. The men behind him laughed, proud of their Chieftain’s wit. The women, burning seaweed, halted in their task to wonder what made the men laugh so loudly. There was usually little enough to laugh about.

Kraka said, ‘What do you bring for my beautiful shellfish, Garroch of Craig Dun? Surely it is worth something?’

Garroch took back the bone stick, but as though he did not relish the idea of touching it. Kraka observed this and for a moment the confidence left his mouth.

Garroch said, ‘We bring you a basket of arrow-heads. One basket of arrow-heads for twenty of shellfish. A good price, Kraka of the Shore.’

Kraka half turned to the men behind him, smiling so that Garroch could not see his face. Then he said, ‘We do not shoot fish with arrows here, Garroch of Craig Dun. Take your arrows to the Hunters. They use arrows and will give you goods for them, no doubt.’

He saw the hot blood rise in Garroch’s cheeks and knew that his taunt had pierced where he had wanted it to. He knew that for the lives of four men Craig Dun had gone in fear of the Hunters from the low valley forests.

Then Garroch shifted a little on the flat audience-stone, as though he was about to signal to the warriors who waited on the ridge. Kraka knew well enough that it would be an easy thing to knock Garroch’s legs from under him and run him through with a fish spear. But the watchers on the hillock carried bows and his own men, sitting defencelessly in the mud, would die before they could reach the shelter of the rocks.

Kraka spoke quickly before Garroch should make the sign. ‘Arrows are not good medicine in this village. They would offend the Fish Woman. She would give no more fish. Then we too would die.’ He gestured sideways, to where the shrivelled carcase of a basking shark swung from hide-thongs at the head of a salt-encrusted post. This was the Totem of the Fisherfolk.

Garroch bowed his head in respect to the stinking thing. He knew that Kraka would not be able to go back on his word of refusal after mentioning the Fish Woman, for she heard all that was said along the bleak estuary.

Garroch said at last, though the words were hard to speak, ‘Give us the fish, Kraka, then when barley comes, three baskets of the grain shall be yours.’

Kraka said, ‘Three baskets for twenty, is that good exchange? Besides, you are offering nothing for something. How do you know that your barley will ever come out of the ground? Perhaps it has deserted Craig Dun and gone away for ever. Perhaps Earth Mother has eaten it!’

Garroch gave a choked cry and leapt down from the stone, his dark eyes wide with anger. He did not take the talking-stick, in his haste.

‘Don’t say that!’ he shouted. ‘No man must talk of the barley like that. If you make her leave us with such words we shall come back here and take the heads of all your people!’

He was standing before Kraka, his white teeth bared, clutching at his own broad belt to keep himself from grappling with the Fisher Chief.

Kraka was leaning back over the dug-out boat, his red face no longer smiling, the vein throbbing in his neck.

A hunchbacked man who wore the skin of an otter about his waist rose quietly from the mud and began to edge his way towards the dug-out, a broad flint dagger hidden in his great hand. This was Kraka’s ‘killing-man’, a slave from a tribe along the coast, whose only work among the Fishers was to protect the Chief.

Garroch shouted, ‘Kraka swine! Kraka dung-eater! Worm in your mouth!’

Then his sudden fury wore itself out. He stood still trembling. Had he been at home among his family he would have let the tears come then as they wished to, but here he knew that he must keep them back or the Fishers would risk the arrows in their frenzy to fling him down and cut the man from him. He had been there once when it had happened to one of their own folk who had howled like a woman when he had slipped in the green mud beneath the clumsy dug-out boat they were dragging in, heavily-laden. ‘Weep like woman; then be woman!’ they had screamed, clustering round the wretch.

Garroch held himself straight and made his mouth smile. Then slowly he bent and took up the talking-stick, keeping his eyes fixed on Kraka all the time.

‘Four baskets of barley, Fisher Chief,’ he said.

Kraka was leaning against the boat, smiling again in his old way, though the thumping of his heart had not yet quietened nor the smell of blood left his nostrils. He observed that the boar’s teeth in Garroch’s necklace were trembling and knew that he too was still unsure of the situation. He would see how far he might go.

‘Dog’s blood! Dog’s blood!’ said Kraka. ‘Is the worm still in my mouth?’

Garroch thought of the baskets of shellfish and of his father’s folk waiting for food under the chalk hill. If this had not been so and he had been there for his own amusement, he would have plunged forward then and have ripped his black-flint knife up the man’s belly. He controlled his itching hand.

‘Spit now, Kraka,’ he said, ‘and the worm will fall from your mouth.’

Kraka made his sneering smile and bending away from them all spat into the mud. Among all the casts and small fish entrails it was impossible to see which of them was the worm.

When he turned again he smiled at Garroch differently.

‘You shall have the fish, Garroch of Craig Dun,’ he said, ‘and we will all pray that your barley comes so that we shall get our dues.’

Garroch opened his mouth to speak, but the Fisher Chief held up the talking-stick for silence.

‘You have a good bargain, Garroch,’ he said, ‘better than you know. And there is still more to come, as you shall see.’

He turned to the men behind him and two of them ran forward, pushing another figure between them, one muffled in a long cloak of many worn and greasy skins. Kraka tore off the covering and a girl stood before Garroch, staring him in the eye.

Kraka said, ‘This is a mouth I have fed which now you must feed; Rua, my daughter. She goes with the shellfish to be your woman. Then one day both our peoples may live under One Old Man, if you can make her lie still underneath you.’

Garroch stared at the dark greasy hair, the flat nose, and the big teeth that showed between the panting of her thick lips. She smiled at him and he wanted to turn away. But he forced himself to go through the ritual action and putting his hand inside the old robe, he ran it up and down her body as she stood for him. Her skin was cold and rough to the touch and she reeked of shellfish.

Garroch stood away from her, shaking his head and trying to smile.

‘I have other wives, Kraka,’ he said. ‘They would not give place to her. They would do things to her which might offend you. A warrior does not need so many women. I cannot take her.’

The men squatting on the shore sucked in the air through their worn teeth with surprise. This young fool from the hill didn’t know what he was turning away, they thought, digging their elbows into each other. Such a woman would make a man forget whether she was beautiful or not. Some of them, the youngest ones, even felt a sort of regret that Garroch should be such a fool. They wanted him to know too. But the older ones were secretly glad that Rua would not be taken away from them. She comforted even the old ones, when Kraka was away fishing.

After the whispering had died, Kraka said, ‘If your pride will not let you take her, it can hardly let you take our baskets of shellfish, man of the little white hill.’

Garroch bowed his head a little and said, ‘Then we must eat small birds and tree-bark until our barley comes to us. We have done it before and we can do it again. But have no doubt, we shall come here again, Kraka!’

Now the girl fell at Garroch’s feet and clasped him by the ankles. Her hands were strong and warm. She looked up at him, her brown eyes fixed on his, begging to be taken, but forbidden by the ancient laws to speak.

Kraka watched her for a while and then said, ‘Yes, you may eat small birds and tree-bark and you may live, but this woman will not live. Among our folk a woman does not wish to live when she is refused by the man she has chosen.’

Garroch shuffled his feet, trying to disengage her hands. She held him even more tightly. He knew that her hands were very strong.

‘That is your law,’ he said, ‘not mine. It does not concern me, Kraka of the Fishers. A man may do as he wills with his own flesh.’

Kraka bent down and dragged the last covering from the girl’s shivering body. Garroch saw the faint white marks of the rod across her broad thin back and for an instant his heart felt a little pity for her. Yet he knew that folk must die, must suffer and die, one way or another. They were doing it all the time and there was nothing very unusual about it. He shook his head again, in spite of the little wave of pity.

Kraka said, ‘Then at least take her body with you in one of the baskets and put it with dignity in your long house of silence on the hill. So her ghost will be satisfied when you join her at last. I give her to you!’

As he spoke the last words, he bent over the girl and raised his broad bladed little axe above her head, taking careful aim so that the spilling might be made at one blow.

But Rua suddenly kicked out with hard heels as the man leaned forward, wriggling sideways away from the falling axe. Kraka gave a grunt and sprawled on his face in the mud, trying to find the axe. But the girl was on his back, her naked body covering him, writhing as he writhed.

Men ran forward but did not touch her as she pressed her skinning-knife under his skull, once, twice, three times, carefully. Kraka’s outstretched fingers clasped and unclasped, his thin legs flailed, and then his body gave a great heave which sent the girl sprawling into the red that now puddled round his head. Then he was quite still, with his mouth open in the red mud.

Rua bent over him and then touched her cheeks and forehead and breasts, leaving the sacred marks on them in thin streaks.

The old men of the Fishers kneeled before her now for she had dared Sea Mother’s wrath to make herself more powerful than their Chief.

She stared past them in contempt, her gaze only for Garroch. ‘The shellfish is yours, Lord,’ she said.

He looked down at the still body of Kraka, then he bowed his head to Rua of the Fishers, in ritual respect.

‘I shall keep my side of the bargain,’ he said. ‘I shall come back with the barley.’

Rua stooped and snatched up the fouled skin garment, swinging it about her cold body. She went to Garroch and let her cold breasts and thighs touch his in token of submission.

‘You need not come back,’ she said. ‘I shall come with you and eat the barley in your house.’

Garroch would have struck her then but the young men of the Fishers were all about him, snuffling like otters and he knew that they would kill him if he refused Rua this time in her pride.

So the men of Craig Dun carried away twenty baskets of shellfish over the windy ridge on their journey from the shore.

Rua walked with Garroch, silent and shuddering now. When they were out of sight of the village smoke, he turned on her in his sudden anger and struck her with his clenched hand again and again on the face.

But she did not weep at this and when he walked on quickly after his laden men, she got up and ran as fast as she could to catch him up, like a dog with only one master.