by David Bell
“This is fresh water from the spring,” said Eluwena. “It is our custom to take it as the first drink at the high summer feast.” She poured the water from a pitcher that had come from a potter’s wheel on Kallista into little alabaster bowls carved on Keftiu. “See how the swallows swoop when I tilt the jug.” She saw the distant look come into Sharesh’s downcast eyes. “They bring the summer with them and take it when they leave.” Sharesh raised his eyes to her. She smiled at him and said, “They stay a little time with us but always return home.”
Embers glowed on the stone hearth. Lamps hanging from the roof timbers gave out soft yellow light. Bunches of yellow flowers covered the doorframe and lintel and fronds of meadowsweet lay strewn over the beaten earth floor. The door was open to let in the warm night air and the light of the full moon. Sounds of feasting could be heard outside but the room itself was still and quiet.
“We are honoured to be guests in this house,” said Kanesh. “But I see one bowl that lies empty.”
“Must we wait for them, Mother,” burst out Anavar. “Letting them come and go as they please?”
“Of course we need not wait, my son. They will come when they have finished their preparations. Now, we must feed our guests.” She raised a hand and two young girls came through the doorway struggling under the weight of a smooth wooden board loaded with bowls, pots and dishes, all steaming with hot food, that they placed on trestles near the hearth. There was a pot of thick stew with fish heads and black seashells floating on the top; a large dish of baked silver fish and another of whole roasted partridges with the feathers burnt off; a bowl of peas boiled soft and mashed into a paste and flavoured with mint and tansy, and another of milk and beaten egg warmed until it thickened and sprinkled with pieces of honeycomb; a porridge of wheat boiled in milk, blended with cream and sweetened with honey and soft red berries. Other plates held loaves of rough barley bread, soft cheese wrapped in oak leaves, and the salted yellow fat made by shaking cream in stoppered jugs. Brought in on a wide tin dish after all the others and given pride of place were the choicest cuts from the king of boars, roasted in plenty of the yellow fat since it was a dry meat, and still smoking from the coals.
Kanesh took first sip of water from his bowl as he knew he was expected to do. Anavar followed him and after Anavar, the Captain of Archers. Sharesh raised his bowl and paused to look at Eluwena. Her face was impassive but he saw something deep in her eyes: expectation? He tilted his bowl and let a few drops of the water fall to the floor. She smiled and lifted her own bowl, passed her hand over it and let drops fall from it too, before she brought it to her lips. Shadows flitted through the doorway and into the room and became Luzar and Ariadana. Both had greenery in their hair and she wore bracelets of curved boar’s tusk on each wrist. Both sipped from the single bowl left, making the same gestures as their mother. To his surprise, Sharesh was offered the first slice of boar meat by Anavar. Kanesh’s expression told him that he was being duly honoured as victor, so he took the meat and with the grease running down his arm, bit, chewed and swallowed while the others watched. He looked Anavar full in the face, gave a slow, grave nod of approval and the feast began.
Apart from Anavar who ate heavily and the Captain of Archers who did well, no one took very much; Kanesh a bite of partridge, Eluwena a sup or two of the wheat porridge, Luzar some of the soft cheese that Sharesh found he liked too, as much as he did the soft sweet yellow mix of eggs and milk. Ariadana chewed slowly on a slice of boar flesh, crunching the crisp rind between her teeth and staring all the while at Sharesh as she did so.
“This is our wine,” said Eluwena. “Made from honey and fruit and flavoured with herbs, but not, as you may have been told, the mistletoe berry. The juice of that we thicken and keep for snaring birds.”
Sharesh watched her fill his bowl.
“It takes its sweet scent from the flowers of the plant strewn beneath your feet,” said Eluwena. “Honey blending with honey.”
“There is another scent here, in the leaves,” said Kanesh. “Sharper, more bitter.”
The scent of almonds, that was it, and pictured in the pale gold liquid in the alabaster bowl, the almond trees in the sunlit garden on Keftiu. He looked across the rim and into the eyes of Pasipha.
“Almonds,” said Kanesh. “I have not seen the tree growing here. We had a box of its fruit gathered from a tree near to the Palace in Keftiu put into your warehouse and a phial of its sweet oil in the sandalwood box, there, on your table.”
Not Pasipha now, but Ariadana.
Anavar lurched to his feet. “Time to watch the dancing and the sport,” he said in a thick voice. He looked uncertainly towards Kanesh. “You will come…”
“Lord Kanesh has matters to go over with me first,” said Eluwena.
Anavar swung round. “Captain, bring the jug. There’s wrestling you must see.”
The Captain of Archers shot a resigned look at Kanesh and left the house with his arm round Anavar’s shoulders. The jug remained where it was. Luzar and Ariadana moved to the doorway and stood waiting. Sharesh got to his feet, put his hands together in the gesture of thanks to Eluwena, and followed them out into the moonlight.
Outside the palisade where the fires were burning low, the eating and drinking was giving way to dancing and storytelling for some and for others the contented drowsiness brought on by lying down with a full stomach and simply gazing into the embers. On the beach where the sand was hard, a ring of men were shouting encouragement to two panting wrestlers who clutched each other’s arms and shoulders, straining and searching to find the hold that would bring a successful throw.
“You ought to show them how to do it,” said the rigger to Kerma. “You’re always telling us about how many you beat back in that Deshret land of yours.”
“Tell them you’ll fight the winner,” said Namun. “You’re bigger than both of them,” he added.
“Listen,” said Kerma, who was watching the wrestlers’ movements very intently. “It’s not a matter of how big you are but how to keep your balance and use your weight when your man loses his. All wrestling isn’t the same. They don’t wrestle on the ground here, like I’m used to. It’s all done getting a hold standing up and then forcing a throw.”
“Well, you’re going to have to do it,” said the rigger. “Because they’re bound to challenge you. They were daft enough to challenge the archers, who took no notice of them, and Namun here at tree climbing, not knowing how fast he can shin up a mast. If they challenge Leptos and Leptos at fish catching, they’ll lose that as well. That leaves the wrestling. They must feel sure they can win that. Look at the muscles on him over there. That’s what comes from years of shovelling all that heavy tinstone. He’s done it! There’s the winner.”
“We’ll see about that,” growled Kerma. “Let me through.”
Not all the women stayed by the fires. One by one, or in little groups, many of them, and not only the young, traced their way along paths through the woods that led to the tall standing stone that only women knew. The caresses of many generations of hands had smoothed its surface except where countless tiny marks patiently scraped with flints were memories of names and pleas. They walked slowly round the tall shaft, trailing lingering fingers across its ancient surface, murmuring their secret words. They decked it with the mistletoe, dog rose, meadowsweet and honeysuckle. Some lay down at its base and let the moonlight bathe them while they slept, but more went off into the woods to see if their hopes might be fulfilled.
Not all the men were drawn to the wrestling. They had their glade in the forest where they now went, carrying the antler crowns and the curved tusks of the boar and the wolf masks that they would put on for the stamping reel round the stone that was theirs alone, before they too set off through the trees in search.
“You took your time,” said the rigger. “He nearly had you over at one point.”
Kerma took a drink from a jug he had found near one of the dying fires and promptly spat his mouthful
onto the ground.
“Sweetened pig piss,” he said. “If that one’s got beer in it, hand it over. No, I had him bent back but he wrapped his leg round mine so if he fell I’d go down with him.”
“So how did you get him off? ”
“Squeezed him where it really hurts and shoved my other hand in his face. It’s allowed, the shoving, not the squeezing, but you do all you can if you want to win.” He took a long pull at the jug. “That’s better. Now, where have they all gone?”
“Who?”
“The ladies, shipmate. Come on.”
From the island’s summit he could see far along the coast in both directions and far inland. There were beads of light in many places where the fires of high summer were now burning low. The bay was a shimmering layer of silver rippled by waves slowly seeking the shore. The moon was so bright that he could see the slim dark shape of the Davina, anchored in the bay, and the tiny light of the lantern on her stern, where Potyr would be watching the stars and waiting for the night to end. They had run, splashing through the water that was beginning to cover the causeway, reaching the island just in time, and now they stood drying themselves in front of the smouldering oak logs and drinking in turn from a flask that Ariadana had brought from the feast. He drank deeply and lowered the flask, still holding it by its slender neck while he looked upwards, searching for the Sailors’ Star. Her voice came from behind him.
“You will not see Crakluz again,” she said. “Luzar will return but not you. Do you recall I said you would know when to come to me, for me to show you in my way things you should see? You are here now, near the fire of high summer night, a night like no other and now you will see.”
Two hands came from behind and gently covered his eyes. He stood very still. His left cheek felt the brush of a polished boar’s tusk and his right the calluses of a sailor’s palm. The flask slipped from his hold but he did not hear it shatter on the rock.
“We see farther when our eyes are closed,” said a voice in his head.
ELUWENA AND POTYR
Kanesh stood up, wincing at the old pain of the scars on his back as he pulled on his jerkin. The lamps were almost out and the hearth bore only cold grey ash. The scent of sweet almond oil still hung on the air but Eluwena was gone. The white linen gown lay where it had dropped to the floor. Her long dark woollen robe had been taken from its holder. The remains of the feast lay cold and congealed on the low table. A dog sidled towards it, cringing away from him when he turned. He let it feed: dogs paid for their keep. The same food would rot on an altar or at the foot of a stone and what was the good of that? He bent down to stroke the dog’s head. A price to pay: is that what he had said to Potyr? He smiled a soft smile that no one else ever saw, no one except… not yet. Take every day as it came and all that it brought with it. He heard voices not far off, raised in argument. He went out without looking back and limped towards the palisade gate, intent on heading off trouble.
It was true. The horizon was the limit of his eyes, but as the hands pressed gently over them, he began to see beyond the heathland to where the forest began, a green ocean, swirling with its own waves at the stroke of the wind; and beyond that, the long line of hill crests where the drovers’ road ran, marked by the boundary stones, and keeping clear of forest and marsh, towards the dry grass lands with their farmsteads, flocks and herds. The living in their thatched houses had the dead close by, under the long mounds that faced the rising of the sun. He had seen so many tombs with their buried vaults of stone but here too he saw great stones that rose from the earth, set in a circle, each one linked to its neighbour by a curved lintel tightly mortised on, as men lay their arms about their mates’ shoulders when they form the ring for the ancient dance. Inside the circle, other circles of different stones and outside the lintelled stones, others, bordering an avenue, with tall portal stones at the start, leading towards the silver glint of a clearwater river that wound its way across the plain. Near the riverbank stood a great round grove of trees stripped of their branches: no, said her voice, look closer, and he saw circles again, and again they were inside a circle, not of stones but a high grass-covered ring opening in one place onto a paved path that led down to the river. Look closer, she said again. There were houses, some square, some round, all thatched, and people sitting beside their cooking fires, or walking to and fro. He knew they were waiting for something, as he was waiting and for the same thing. He walked among them and spoke to some but they seemed neither to see nor hear him. Not even a dog lifted its head or sniffed the air as he passed by. He stroked the muzzles of the hobbled packhorses that had reached the end of their long journeys along the trackways and now stood patiently by the sacks and baskets taken from their backs; but none opened its mouth for a morsel. He searched in the sacks and found grain in this, tinstone in another, charcoal in a third. No one challenged him. He took a leg from a rabbit roasting over a fire and bit into the meat. No one stopped him. There was no taste in his mouth. Come this way, she said; with us, said the other voice, the one he knew so well. There were richly dressed people inside the innermost circle of great linked stones and many more outside who knew the place for them. Those inside the circle held forked twigs of mistletoe in their hands and those outside, posies of the yellow flowers of summer, and all of them were waiting, too, for the same thing. Soon, she said, it will be soon, and then was gone with the other, but the hands stayed over his eyes. He saw them dancing slowly round the stone circle, stepping lightly from lintel to lintel, round and round, until at last they stopped above the entrance that opened onto the avenue. Here they turned their backs to the stones and looked into the distance, where all the others were looking, to where the sky was showing the first signs of dawn. He stood in the centre of the inner circle, among the richly dressed, where he knew it was his right to be, and saw the sun rise and climb above the outer stone, sending its flood of light rushing along the avenue and through the entrance and into the inner circle, to blind him with its fire.
“Would you ever leave your ship, Captain?” said Eluwena.
“She is my only companion, my Lady.”
“This many years, I know; but I am here now.”
“I knew that you would come, my Lady.”
“You carry a great cold sadness in your heart. Time has not served to lighten it and no one else has tried.”
“There are those, now very few, who know of it.”
“Who all keep silent, thinking it best to respect it. I know of it too, and I know that although the sadness comes from your terrible loss, the coldness comes from guilt for the terrible vengeance you took, vengeance that ever afterwards has besmirched the memory of the precious things taken from you.”
“How can you know this?”
“I do not know how I know, Captain, only that I do. Some might say that it is the Great Mother, who, the same people say, knows everything, speaking through me.”
“You are not an ancient wise woman speaking from the depths of her cave, my lady.”
“I am pleased that you do not see me as ancient, Captain, but I am wise enough to see that my words have found some mark.” She came closer and put her hand on Potyr’s. He did not move it away. “The sadness we may soften,” she said quietly. “If never soothe away. The coldness needs warmth and what better time to find it than on the morning of high summer?”
They talked for a long time and watched the sun rise. Then they stopped talking, also for a long time, as it climbed higher and higher in the cloudless sky.
Then she said, “Captain Potyr, I know you are troubled about being so long at sea and uncertain whether you will reach your home port before the seas turn against you. I am no sailor, but hear my words. You must not return the way you came. I will tell you the course you must take.”
Sharesh felt the warmth of the risen sun on his face and its brightness shining through his closed eyelids, as it had on that hot day in the garden before Pasipha woke him and led him to her bedroom. The hands were holding his
now, not covering his eyes. The three of them stood together inside the circle of stones on the hill above the sea and watched the morning sun lift higher and move away from the tall stone it had touched when first it rose.
Sharesh yawned. “I feel as tired as if I’d been walking all day,” he said. “But it’s only morning.”
“You travelled far,” said Luzar. “Saw many places.”
“I remember, yes, now I remember. I dreamed…”
“You dreamed of what used to be,” said Ariadana. “Now it is different. But always remember what used to be. Remember.”
“Different? How is it different?”
“Temples become market places; stone avenues, quarries; timbers rot and great stones lean and fall and no one remembers how to set them up again. Cattle now graze where once processions carried their offerings to the sacred stones and pigs root among the graves and scatter the bones. The old ways change and the old places decay.”
“And good new things can take their place,” said Sharesh. “You have seen our ship; Luzar knows how she sails. There never was such a ship before! I know a smith in a far off land who works a metal few have ever seen and no one else knows how to work. Luzar knows this too. And,” he added with a grin. “On this voyage I began to play the pipes and some say even that was a good new thing to do.”
To his surprise, she smiled. “Singer of songs,” she said. “Tomorrow you will work all day on your fine ship and the day after that you will sail away. But today you will come with me into the forest and I will show you an old place where you will sing your new songs to me.”
“I had to laugh,” said Kerma. “When you picked up that thing you thought was a pig turd and put it in your mouth. Great Diwonis and Lord Potheidan save us! The look on your face!”