She hesitated for an age, then reached down and ran her fingers through his wild hair. ‘You can’t attend the sacrament,’ she said softly. ‘But there might be a way of bringing it to you. I’ll talk to Mother.’
‘Anything,’ he whispered. ‘Anything.’
* * *
On the evening of the equinox Ardwyn told him to wait in his cottage and be patient, but the deserter had no intention of sitting placidly at home while the Farrow performed their sacrament, and possibly she or Mother suspected as much because whenever he went anywhere near the woods on the eastern side of the village Gar was there, blocking his way. He saw armloads of blankets and firewood being taken up towards the clearing. He was permitted into the church where bundles of dried jimsonweed were being burned to produce a sweet-smelling smoke that made his head swim. He stood at the back and watched their liturgy. The celebrants arrived dressed in loose robes and wearing masks in stylised boar designs – some crude and plain, others gleaming with precious metals and gems like religious relics. They sang in a language he didn’t understand; it sounded like Welsh, but he suspected it might have been that of the long-dead Cornovii. Eventually the celebrants made their way along the path into the woods, carrying burning torches, leaving him behind.
The deserter decided that he’d had enough pussy-footing around and strode brazenly up to where Gar was standing with his arms folded and his massive jaw set firm.
‘No,’ said the big man.
The deserter didn’t say anything. He simply reached into his coat pocket and produced the replenished brandy bottle. He waved it at Gar, unscrewed the top, swigged, and then tossed it to the ground at Gar’s feet. ‘I think you know what I mean,’ he said. ‘All I want to do is look. Just look. I won’t interfere, you have my word.’
Gar picked up the bottle and sniffed it. Then he took a quick step forward and grasped the deserter by the throat. Shocked and choking, the deserter was positive that Gar’s massive hand was meeting thumb-to-finger at the back of his neck. ‘Wait…’ he croaked.
‘Uss ook,’ Gar growled, his face inches from the deserter’s, every peg-like tooth and tusk on display.
Everett nodded, unable to speak now.
‘Uss ook, or…’ Gar squeezed a fraction tighter, and black blotches began to crowd Everett’s vision from the edges. Then he was released, and fell back, gasping.
‘That sounds very reasonable,’ he wheezed, and staggered past Gar into the trees.
The clearing was lit by flaming braziers set atop tall poles, which were burning the same jimsonweed as in the church, its smoke sweet and thick and heavy in the clearing. Beside the pillar a great bonfire had been built, and had obviously been burning for some time because it was by now a mound of glowing embers. The Farrow of Moccus had gathered in a loose circle around the stone pillar, having removed their robes but kept their masks. They stood naked and listened raptly – the men stroking their cocks, the women dipping between their legs – to a woman in the centre that he recognised as Mother from her voice as she declaimed to the congregation. Another woman stood close by who he assumed was Ardwyn; it was the first time he had seen her naked, and for a moment the sight of it blinded him to everything else. Then he realised that she was carrying a long, cloth-wrapped object which she unwound with reverent care and passed to Mother, who held it aloft.
It was a carnyx, the S-shaped war-horn of the Cornovii. It was at least four feet tall, and it was made of bone. The upper end, the bell of the horn, was very definitely an actual boar’s skull, but whether the rest of it was femur or vertebrae he couldn’t tell. He could only think that it must somehow be decorated over an actual brass instrument because he couldn’t see how that thing should be able to make any noise. Nevertheless, Mother raised the bone carnyx to her lips and blew a long, mournful note. It carried past the circle of worshippers, into the woods, through him, through his very bones, and every sinew, muscle fibre, and blood vessel sang in harmony with it so that his whole body felt like a tuning fork drawing the resonance out of him. His hair stirred on his scalp, his skin shivering with gooseflesh, his cock rigid in his pants. It was all he could do to stop himself from answering that call, breaking cover and running to prostrate himself before Mother.
She blew a second time, and the worshippers fell on each other. Some literally so – thrusting, grasping, sucking – in pairs and groups, copulating in combinations that in some cases he struggled to make sense of. For a man who believed himself incapable of being shocked by human depravity he was astonished – not by the acts he was witnessing, but by the energy of the participants. Most of them were middle-aged, with drooping breasts and flapping scrotums, yet they were going at it with all the fervour of dogs in the street. He understood the blankets spread out on the ground now, and he tried to follow what or who Ardwyn was doing, but it was impossible amidst the tangles of writhing limbs. Their gasps and cries filled the clearing. The smoke grew heavier and sweeter, and his head was swimming, sweat blurring his vision. The firelight that gleamed on backs, buttocks, and breasts began to resemble that of the flares drifting over No Man’s Land, and the rutting figures were churning the grass to mud, in places so deep that they were sinking and stirring up objects long buried in the earth as if out of a cauldron: sandbags, duck-boards, barbed wire, and bodies. Pale limbs in rotting uniforms, rats and rifles. The orgiasts fucked the cadavers as eagerly as the living in anywhere that gaped, or filled themselves with death-stiff fingers. He saw a woman straddling the face of a corpse with half its skull blown away, and a man held aloft by barbed wire wrapped around each limb, being sodomised with a bayonet. The deserter reeled away, head and stomach both churning, his damaged lungs in revolt, coughing and vomiting over the bushes.
A third time, Mother blew the horn. Now, however, it seemed that she didn’t so much create the sound as pull it out of the air, a note that had always been there unheard in the background, like the song of blood in the ear, from a time far down in the immeasurable well of the years when there was only woodland in whose shadow humanity crept fearfully, hunting aurochs with flint blades. The bone carnyx drew it out of the past and through the human bodies contorting around it, clothing itself with sound in the world, summoning.
And the god came.
The deserter heard it, something huge moving through the trees, pushing aside branches that stood higher than his head.
What emerged from the edge of the clearing walked like a man, if a man ever grew to ten feet tall – naked, its limbs and torso busy with tattoos and the raised ridges of ritual scarification in spirals, stripes, and complex knots. From the shoulders up all semblance of humanity ended in a boar’s head, its amber eyes reflecting the firelight back in twin points of yellow fire above a snout from which tusks curved like scythes.
But it was old, this thing. Peering harder through the stinging smoke, the deserter saw that its eyes were filmed with cataracts, its tusks were cracked and yellow, its once-broad chest was sunken above a sagging belly, and its wizened limbs shook with geriatric palsy as it regarded its worshippers. The black hide of its head and the hackles that ran down its spine were streaked silver-white. How could this be their god? he wondered. Moccus looked like he barely had the strength to keep himself upright, never mind any to spare for his faithful. The deserter’s initial awe was quickly overtaken by disappointment and even a kind of pity.
He stepped over the rutting figures and closer to the stone, where several men who had remained aloof from the orgy were waiting, but instead of them making obeisance to the beast, Moccus knelt to them. Mother resumed her intonations as many pairs of hands grasped the god’s outstretched arms and pulled, bringing his head lower, to within closer range of a great knife with a black, crescent-shaped blade that was held by one of the men. The sickle-wielder plainly had never done this before; he was nervous, the blade trembling in his hand, and at the height of Mother’s chanting Moccus threw back his head with a roar that made the very flames sway, but the butcher made such a
half-hearted and shallow sweep of the killing stroke that the beast was more maddened than hurt, and the other men struggled to hold him. If he hadn’t already been so weak with age he’d have broken free and wrought carnage about the clearing. As it was, the only carnage was visited upon his throat – a messy, amateur hacking that the deserter found infuriating to witness. The least they could have done was make it quick. They tried to catch as much of his blood as they could – cruor, he heard them calling it – in three great bronze bowls but a lot of it was lost to the ground. Mother was saying: ‘He Who Eats the Moon, we thank thee for this, thy bounty,’ and in his memory the deserter saw Bill praying for the German boy that he’d killed for his leg.
As Moccus’ convulsions ceased the orgiasts slowed their frenzies and gradually disengaged from each other, coming forward to cup their hands in the bronze bowls and ladle the god’s cruor over their bodies, painting the stone with the rest. The butcher and his assistants prepared the carcass; certain items of the viscera were set aside (the heart and liver, he presumed) while the unwanted offal was taken into the woods for Gar’s kin and the flesh was parcelled up in leaves and set amongst the bonfire’s embers. He was watching them bury the head, hide, and bones at the foot of the pillar when he felt a tap on his shoulder, and whirled. It was Gar.
‘Ee-nuff now,’ he said. He was chewing on something, which rendered his speech even more indistinct than usual. ‘Go.’
The deserter’s sigh of relief deflated him. ‘You know you move very quietly for a big lad,’ he said.
Gar bunched a ham-sized fist in the front of his coat. ‘Ee-nuff. Now. Go.’
‘Fine, I’m going, I’m going.’
The only other people remaining in the village were the few servants and drivers, with whom he had no desire to make small talk, so he hid himself away in his cottage until Ardwyn came to find him a few hours later. She was dressed and clean and if he hadn’t seen with his own eyes what she’d been doing up in the woods he wouldn’t have believed it. Far from being revolted by her participation in the orgy, the thought of who she might have had between her legs only made him want her more. She produced a charred, leaf-wrapped bundle. From it arose the smell of roast pork, but it was richer than that, a deeper aroma that was familiar and set his mouth watering.
‘I’ve persuaded Mother to let you have this,’ she said. ‘You have no idea how unprecedented it is. She must really want you to stay.’
He unwrapped it and looked at the handful of cooked meat. ‘So, I just eat it, then?’
‘You could try wearing it as a hat but I don’t think it would be particularly effective.’
‘No, I mean, do I need to say a prayer or anything?’
‘That which you would pray to, you hold in your hand. What would be the point of prayer? Show your gratitude by accepting what is offered.’
So he ate.
It was heavier than pork, somewhere between that and man, though its effect on his system was much more immediate and pronounced. It reminded him of the one time he and Bill had found some dead stretcher-bearers and scavenged from their pockets the tins containing phials of morphine and ether. A dreamy languor spread out from his belly and into his limbs, and the tightness in his chest eased – a tightness that he’d lived with for so long that he’d become unaware of it until now, as it passed, and he drew in a huge lungful of air and laughed it out without coughing for the first time in as long as he could remember.
‘My God, this is incredible!’ He beamed at her, then took her around the waist and twirled her around the room, laughing.
‘Your god indeed!’ She laughed with him. ‘So, does it taste like man? I’ve always wanted to know.’
‘You want to know what man tastes like?’ He grinned, pulling her towards the sofa. ‘Let me help you find out.’
7
REPLENISHMENT
‘NOW THEN,’ SHE SAID AFTERWARDS, STRAIGHTENING her skirt as he sprawled naked beside her. ‘I’m going to tell you something that you’re not going to like hearing, but you’re going to keep your mouth shut and not interrupt me and at the end of it you’re going to agree with me, otherwise you leave here tonight and never return. Are we clear?’
He propped himself up on one elbow and frowned. ‘Do I have a choice?’
‘I’ve just told you what your choices are. Weren’t you listening?’
‘Then we’re clear, I suppose.’
She reached between his legs and cupped her hand around his balls, caressing, and he grunted with pleasure. ‘Tomorrow night, before everyone starts to leave, there will be a small dinner party at my mother’s home, quite private, to which you will be invited as a courtesy. Our guests will be my fiancé and his parents.’
The deserter opened his mouth. She tightened her grip on his balls, sharp nails digging, and he closed his mouth again. She relented, nodding approval.
‘The Farrow who have come to our celebration are from all over the country, and it’s not just for a bit of fun in the woods, or even an encounter with the sacred. We are not a cult, Everett, not a bunch of inbred country bumpkins or bored aristocrats. We are a church, and a church must be maintained financially, and for that a church must grow. Do you remember how I told you that the Farrow are matriarchal, like boar themselves?’
He nodded while trying to keep as still as possible, which wasn’t easy. ‘Males are solitary,’ he said. ‘They mate and they’re off again. Right now I’m thinking they’ve got the right idea.’
She laughed a little, but didn’t loosen her grip. ‘Well, we may not be boar, but the principle is much the same; the other reason for our gathering is so that young, eligible, well-resourced young men can ally themselves with the daughters of influential families, who will leave to establish new churches, and so we grow. He provides the material security, she provides the spiritual leadership.’
‘Seems fair,’ he said. ‘Listen, is there any way I could…’
‘Shh,’ she replied, and he shushed. ‘The timescale is obviously longer than you might expect – the flesh of Moccus doesn’t grant immortality but we tend to be extremely long-lived. The match that Mother made for me with Gus – that’s his name – happened before you were born, and some year soon, when he is in a position to support a new church, we will be married and I will leave Swinley. Until then, you and I may do as we please, as long as you understand that I am not yours. I’m telling you this now because young men, like boar, tend to become territorial when a rival male appears, and, well, I like you, and I would hate for you to do something stupid and get yourself thrown out. Now, before I let you go, are you going to say something annoying or are we going to be grown-ups about this?’
‘Believe me,’ he said, ‘the last thing I intend to do is annoy you.’
She let him go and he hurried to put his clothes back on.
‘I don’t know what you think I’m going to do about it,’ he said, buttoning his shirt. ‘Challenge him to a duel for your affections?’
‘Hmm,’ she replied, pretending to give it serious consideration. ‘Which would you prefer: pistols at dawn or mounted lances in shining armour?’
‘While you watch from the top of your ivory tower? Sorry, my lady.’ He laughed and shook his head. ‘You women. How it flatters you to think that we’re all dripping hard and squaring up to compete for the privilege of rutting with you. You wave us off to fight with tears in your eyes. You love us when we’re heroes, home on leave or wounded somewhere that doesn’t turn us into stammering eunuchs, and you dole out white feathers to the chaps who won’t or can’t live up to your fairy-tale ideal. If I wanted to challenge this well-heeled beau of yours, whatever his damned name is, I’d bite his throat out in his sleep. But I’m not. I have no interest in him. I came here for me first and foremost, and while you’ve been a pleasant enough bit on the side, please don’t imagine that I intend to endanger that by pandering to your romantic delusions.’ He finished buttoning his shirt. ‘I hope that wasn’t too annoying.’
For a moment he thought she was going to slap him, but instead she took his face in her hands and kissed him full on the lips. ‘Perfect,’ she murmured against him. ‘You’re absolutely perfect.’
* * *
The last thing Everett wanted to do was sit down to dinner and make polite conversation. He wanted to take this newfound vitality and run with it into the night – run to the top of Edric’s Seat and howl at the stars, or find Sus in the woods and see what it was like to fuck something nearly human, or get drunk with Gar and fight him until neither of them could stand. He almost told her that her dinner could go to the devil, but found that he was curious to see who or what she had been allied with, so he agreed.
His curiosity was not justified. Augustus Melhuish and his parents were no more or less than he’d expected: self-assured in their privilege and generous with their facile opinions about the war. While he found nothing threatening about the young man, Gus obviously found some in him, because he kept making arch comments about what a good sport Ardwyn was, and wasn’t she such a sport, and didn’t Everett think that she was a sport, as if to stake his claim over her, and because an annoying fly must eventually be swatted, the deserter found himself responding with, ‘I’m curious as to what kind of sport you think she is, exactly, Gus. Something involving balls or one that requires a spirited mount?’ which shut him up – at least until they were leaving.
When Gus found him, he was smoking a cigarette by Mother’s sty of prize Welsh pigs, enjoying the darkness and the ability to draw a full lungful of smoke again without choking. The deserter was surprised to see that they too had participated in the feast; they were nosing in one of the great bronze bowls, and had licked it clean. These beasts were obviously more important than he had first thought. Then Gus arrived, interrupting his train of thought as he looked the deserter up and down with a contempt that he obviously practised on the lower orders.
Bone Harvest Page 5