Читать книгу The Golden Strangers - Henry Treece - Страница 9

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So the folk of Craig Dun did not die that year. The fish kept them just alive, half-rotten though it was before they finished it, until the ewes had dropped their lambs and the badgers their kittens. The folk had been in a dangerous state; the Old Man, speaking now through his son, had not dared to call for a sacrifice.

In the darkness of his hut, with a trusted guard at the door, he had told Garroch: ‘I have known times like these before, on one hand’s fingers. Then we begged Earth Mother to help us. She was kind. She turned the old men and women into hogs and the young babies into sucking-pigs and we ate them to keep strength in our bodies.’

Garroch nodded. ‘It would be wasteful now to sacrifice them, Old Man. I understand you,’ he said.

Brach lay in a dark corner of the hut, her eyes shining out of the blackness of her hair with excitement at what she might see, might eat. She was a privileged one: the only Other who was allowed to be there when the Old Man spoke to his son, who would one day be the Old Man himself.

But she did not see it, eat it. The famine passed and the Hunters did not pad round the thorn fence at night any longer. The People of the Hill ate well on berries and lamb and badger meat. And the barley thrust up through the light soil as though glad to meet the sun and then to nourish the bodies of her worshippers.

Garroch went out every day, acting as Marrag’s eyes, to watch the tender green shoots growing, becoming stronger in the new sun that the Old Man had persuaded Earth Mother to let them have. Brach went with him, careful not to tread on his lengthening shadow. She showed her young father great respect when other eyes could see them, however foolish they were together in the warm privacy of their house. And when Garroch kneeled, praying and caressing the green barley, she kneeled too and knocked her forehead gently and rhythmically on the rain-softened earth below the great chalk hill.

Always on these mornings, even when Garroch’s wives and the village folk had gone back to their tasks, away from the stones which marked the white stone boundaries of the various fields, they had a third companion.

She always stood at a distance, wrapped in her greasy cloak, watching them hungrily. The smell of cockles had gradually left her body and now only the most unkind of the folk called her Stinking Fish. Her name in the village was now simply Fish. She had heard this name often, even from the youngest children. So as the months passed she had forgotten that her name had once been Rua, and even heard herself called Fish in her dreams.

And every morning she would leave the draughty hut that Garroch allowed her, separated from his by a clay wall, and wait until he went with Brach to stroke the barley so lovingly.

Fish always wept and asked her Shark Goddess why she couldn’t become a barley woman, so that the prince’s dark fingers might stroke her and feel so tenderly into the joining-places, the secret warm places of growth and renewal.

But the Shark Goddess seemed to have forgotten her since that horrid day on the shore when she had pressed her flint under Kraka’s head-bone. Fish felt neglected of all creation and wept in the darkness of her hovel more often than she smiled in the sunlight, even though the good Spring was dancing on to the warm Summer.

True, she had much to be unhappy about. The folk of Craig Dun would not speak to her, for they were afraid of Garroch who was already the Old Man in their minds and might become angry at any moment and call for a sacrifice or a cutting. And a cutting was worse than a sacrifice. For a sacrifice was quick and perhaps without pain, if the Old Man chose so and knew his trade. But the other was worse; husband might be chosen to cut wife, or wife husband, whenever, however, wherever the Old Man decided, as he had heard the Old Woman of the stone direct. There was fear in that treacherous cutting almost as sharp as the sudden agony. It was as though one body had turned on itself to make pain, not love. So the folk of Craig Dun feared to speak to Fish, who wandered alone about the high chalk hill, even braving Hair the wolf, anxious only that someone, something, should admit her right to be called a creature of flesh and blood, worth loving, worth tearing to bloody shreds and eating.

The other wives of Garroch had been cruel to Fish. They had grown used to the idea that they each shared something of his lithe dark body over the few years they had known him. They had each been children of the village, an element in the interlaced community of the Chalk Hill, where one blood flowed almost in the veins of all.

But to share him yet again, with a stranger, a salt-skinned fishy woman of an alien folk, that was unthinkable.

So, at first they ignored Fish, and merely did not reply when she spoke to them, respectfully, in her uncouth simple common-language, anxious to be friendly. They turned away from her later, in the presence of others, nodding their heads derisively, or pointing backwards with their thumbs over their shoulders at her to indicate their contempt.

Yet Fish stood it all and still spoke to them, the smile on her broad face becoming always more fixed, harder, more cruel in its turn.

And then at last, when they feared that they could not hurt this stupid creature in these ways, they met together at night and created ways in which they might humiliate her.

So, at last, one night, they had burst in a sudden rush down the steps of her solitary hovel, cloaked—as though she had eyes that could pierce the blackness of a hut—and while two women lay on her, pinning her starved limbs to the clay floor, the other with frantic and inexpert fervour slashed with a flint skinning-knife at that which they all envied, her youth.

Even so, when she had found that they were too strong for her, falling on her in her uneasy sleep as they did, Fish had not screamed, as others would have done. She lay back, biting through her lip, silent and sweating as she had never been before, until the thing had finished. Then the weight had gone from her body and only the searing blind agony remained. She heard the rustle of bodies in the narrow passageway up the steps, and then she bled into an exhausted sleep which left no energy for speculation.

Garroch’s wives had not treated Fish well. Yet she loved Garroch in spite of that, because she had killed her father for him. For a few baskets of cockles when these folk of Craig Dun were starving. So she followed him as her wounds healed, not daring to speak to him, but hoping that one day he might recall how she had driven in the little flint, how she had covered his body with hers to keep his open mouth in the mud, how she had pressed herself to him in offering.

She followed Garroch to the barley fields and hated black-haired Brach for being always there with him, walking so carefully, so as not to defile that almost-sacred shadow.

And this particular morning it happened that when Garroch had gone from the barley field to take back his message to Old Marrag, Brach stayed behind, singing to herself as she sat on one of the big stones that marked the boundaries of her father’s field. She rocked herself as she sang, for every bit as though she did not know anyone else was there. And as she watched the girl in her contentment, Rua’s anger was so great that she picked up an edged flint as big as her hand and came up behind Brach. She did not know quite what she was going to do, but she thought that if Brach was out of the way Garroch might let her walk in the barley fields with him every morning. When the harvest was in, then perhaps he would not want her any more, she thought, but at least she would have known what it was to walk with him alone. Besides, Brach’s mother was one of those who had cut her in the dark.

But even as the woman raised the flint above the black head, Brach said in the Women’s Tongue, without turning, ‘I know you are behind me, Rua Fish. I know what you have in your hand. Put the stone down, Rua Fish, or your eyes will turn to pebbles and your heart will be a flint.’

Rua’s anger left her. She felt attracted to this little girl because of her courage. She knew there was no magic about this: Brach had seen her shadow, out of the corner of her eye, for the sun was behind them both.

She said, speaking the same secret language of Women, ‘I could have killed you, Garroch’s girl, but I didn’t. Perhaps I shall kill you another time.’

She sat on the stone next to Brach for she was anxious to have someone to talk to, even if it was only this child, whom she both hated and liked curiously at the same time.

And as she sat down, the otterskin robe fell from her shoulders leaving the upper part of her body uncovered. She saw Brach staring at the long and curling white ritual scars round her breast and down her body into the place which the robe covered.

‘Only the daughter of a Chief may wear these,’ said Rua, tracing the circular scars with her finger. ‘That is the custom of my folk. You may touch them.’

She leaned forward and held Brach’s finger to the puckered marks. The girl felt a strange thrill run through her.

‘Are you magic?’ she said, a little afraid now and yet strangely attracted to this foreign woman who was so different from her dark fat-bodied little mother who always spoke in a high angry voice because there was so much to do, skins to scrape, flax to beat, babies to feed.

Rua lowered her eyelids and smiled. ‘I can make the voices of the gull and the gannet,’ she said, ‘and they come when I call.’

She looked up; the child did not seem very impressed.

‘I am a seal-woman at the time of full moon,’ said Rua, looking Brach straight in the eye. ‘I slip into the water and this’—she smoothed her hands down her flanks—‘this becomes all furry.’

Brach sucked in her breath with excitement. ‘Do it now,’ she said. ‘I will not say that you have shown me.’

Rua’s thick lips drew back from her big teeth in a smile. ‘It is daylight,’ she said, ‘and there is no water here. If you will come with me to the sea tonight, I will show you. Will you come?’

Brach was suddenly afraid of this strange woman. She was trying to take her away. The little girl got up from the rock and was about to run back to the safe village; but Rua Fish beckoned her, staring all the time into her eyes. Brach felt that she must go to her, to the seal-woman with the white cuts about her breasts.

‘What do you want, seal-woman?’ she said, frightened.

Rua took her by the wrists and drew her close to her body as she sat on the stone. She waited a while until her own spirit might have entered into the little girl’s body. Then she whispered hoarsely in Brach’s ear, ‘I want Garroch, your father. By the spilling of blood he is mine. I want Garroch.’

Brach began to shudder, feeling the little waves of excited fear running up and down her body, from her belly to her throat and back again. She tried to speak, once, twice, but her tongue stuck in her mouth and she made sounds like a fool.

‘I want Garroch,’ said Rua. ‘He is my body and blood now. You must tell him to come to me tonight. He loves you and will do what you say. Will you promise to tell him to come to me?’

Brach was suddenly aware that this mad woman was pinching her wrists most painfully in her hard hands. She nodded, the tears falling from her eyes as her head moved.

‘Yes, yes, I promise,’ she said.

The woman pulled her hard against her body again.

‘May the worm live in your mouth and the snake go inside you in the dark if you break your word! Promise again!’

Brach burst into tears and shook her head blindly. ‘Yes, yes, I promise,’ she said.

Then, breaking away, she ran towards the village. At the farthest boundary stones she dared to turn and look back. Rua was still sitting there, the cloak fallen from her body, her hands out as though she held someone, her eyes shut and her broad lips moving as though she spoke to one she loved.