by David Bell
The house overlooked the harbour and had a large window letting in the onshore evening breeze, which helped to cool it after the heat of the day. The wounded lay on cots in the ground-floor workshop which had been cleared to make room for them and their nurses. One of these was Amaia the old midwife who knew my mother and remembered Kanesh well, and the other a young woman who Amaia said had been a maid in the Lady’s House; she seemed frightened to look at or speak to me and Amaia told me later that she was one of the younger women who had been kept for sport by the pirates; she had never said a word to anyone since. They had done what they could for the injured men, cleaning sword cuts with water in which dried pomegranate skin had been steeped, and wine, pouring in a few drops of the precious honey and packing them with poultices of willow leaves and dried sedge bound on with strips of cloth, which they would change three times a day. Amaia said that if the wounds began to dry she would need yellow Lemnian earth and saffron to speed the healing, but she had neither. She feared the deeper wounds that had reached the bone would not heal and if they went bad the only way she knew, which might work was to put maggots on the wound to eat away the rotting flesh. She pointed to two cots where the young woman was gently placing freshly dampened cloths on the foreheads of the two groaning men and shook her head. She knew no way of treating deep thrust wounds in the stomach and bowels and she had nothing to soften their agonising pain. All she could do was speak gently to them, hold a hand and appeal to the Mother. I asked her if she would try to persuade the young woman to listen to me because I thought I knew how to help. She went across and began to talk quietly but earnestly, pointing to me and then to the dying men and waiting and, when there was no response, repeating her pleas. At last the girl nodded and followed her hesitantly and looking down to the floor until she stood in front of me, but carefully out of reach.
I said as gently as I could that I knew she had been a maid in the Lady’s House. My mother had been one of the matrons who were admitted there by the Priestess and, I paused, breathed in hard and went on, and Kallia who was my adored had been one of the crocus maidens who were educated in the cult at the Lady’s House. There must be saffron and perhaps syrup of the poppy in the House and perhaps she also knew where these medicines were kept? The saffron might save the lives of some of the men she was tending and the poppy syrup would lessen the suffering of those who were going to die. Would she now go to the Lady’s House to bring back these precious things? She said nothing. My mother and Kallia would have done this: would she? At last she raised her head and looked at me, questions in her eyes, but still said nothing. For these men who had saved her and for whom we were appealing to the Mother? She looked round at the cots and turned back to me. She gave the tiniest of nods and turned towards the door. I said I would come with her to see she was safe, but I would stay guarding the entrance to the Lady’s House while she was inside. She was true to her promise and before long we were back with the saffron kept dry in sealed boxes and some phials full of dark syrup like those I had seen myself in the dining room of the Lady’s House. I was watching her help Amaia prepare draughts of the syrup and drip them carefully through quills into the mouths of the injured men, when I heard the sound of the triton shell which is sometimes blown to alert anyone needed when a ship is about to sail. The signal had to be for me. As I left I called my thanks and said I would see them again. I would bring some of the white earth we had taken from the island of women, I said: it was good for poultices. They were too busy to reply.
The Davina was about to cast off when I reached the jetty, but I was just in time to hand to Potyr the tablets I had made listing the meagre stores we had left until ships could reach us again from Keftiu. They might carry some weight in meetings with Sekara and the Palace administrators. A large crowd was there to see the ship leave and the usual noises of farewell and coarse jokes followed her as she was pulled slowly out of the harbour. The voices fell silent as she turned the headland and was lost to view, and many must have thought, as I did, that our best ship and best defence were now gone, and until she returned, with others, so was our safety.
I went back to the harbor master’s lodge that now served as our headquarters, with Kanesh and the Captain of Archers. Namun was already inside. He announced that the captured ship had been re-named the New Dolphin and was rather crestfallen when no one seemed very surprised. I told them what I knew about the wounded: that they were were being well looked after. Kanesh said he knew but didn’t explain how he had found out. He said the enemy wounded were in the care of their comrades; he would ask the women if they would make a visit but had little hope that they would agree. I said I would be surprised if Amaia refused. Then he said I was to go to the warehouse, see what stores were left and work out a way of allotting rations that would make the most of our limited supplies. That would take me the rest of the day, better get on with it. As I was going through the door, he called me back and said that in the morning I was to take my three most reliable swordsmen and as many archers as the Captain here could spare, and rations for two days, and join Namun’s ship which was under orders to work round the Lagoon searching for supplies in the outlying settlements and finding out what sort of state they were in. Look out for survivors, he added: that young woman helping the midwife had been heard saying that some people from up there, jerking his head in the direction of the Lagoon, had escaped on a small boat just after the raiders had attacked the town and she thought the Governor had been seen with them. I stared at Namun who grinned back at me: he had known all along. I leaped outside and ran along the jetty singing Kallia at the top of my voice. Men shook their heads as the lunatic rushed past. A voice calling after me from the harbor master’s lodge said not to forget to take some salt for the fish I was going to bring back. I knew where the best salt was made: Lemaka. She might be there, of course. But I did not think so. There was another place where she would be safe, a place neither of us could ever forget.
A TIME TO PLANT AND SOW
“No, no: hold it like this, pointing down. Just with your fingertips: now, blow across the holes. Too hard: sounds like a frog. Try again, softer. Much better: I heard the call of the dove in that. You’re learning. Now, watch me.”
Sharesh ran his lips lightly this way and that across the pipes, sounding sweet notes, high and low, holding some and skipping across others in long trembling trills.
“I’m trying to play the song of a bird I heard in Pherethan,” he said. “I never saw it; hardly anyone has, except Luzar, of course. You hear it best at night. We don’t have as many songbirds here as they do in Pherethan.”
“You sound as if you miss the place,” said Kallia
“I don’t miss it but I think about it sometimes. It’s so green and the air’s so soft.”
“Do you still think about that girl, the one who beat you in the boar hunt?” she said, teasing him. “What was her name?”
Yes, he did think of her, sometimes even when Kallia was lying in his arms, but what he said was, “Ariadana? No. Well, sometimes: when I look at Luzar. They’re so alike.”
“So alike you could hardly tell them apart; that’s what you said.”
“Don’t forget: Luzar has tattoos,” he smiled.
“I know,” she said. “I’d like to see them. I wasn’t sure about Luzar at first, but the more you talked about him the more I came to like him, especially when you said he has such a strange way of looking at you; as if he knows everything about you and more than you know yourself. Will he ever come to Kallista?”
Was she trying to make him jealous? He picked up his pipes again and said, “Listen to this. It’s about all the birds setting off for home when summer’s over, and leaving one behind because it has a broken wing and can’t fly. It’s a love song I made for you.”
When he had played it and when she asked him, played it again, he said if he played any more, his lips would be too sore for him to be able to kiss her in the way he wanted to.
“You don’t have to
play any more,” she said and pulled him down beside her.
Since spring had come, there had been a few brief times like that, and others for walking, or swimming when the water was warm, or sitting and watching the moon rise over the distant Mountain. After the Return, as everybody called it, life had been very hard at first. Food was short and a sickness came, carrying off famished young children and weakened older folk. Koreta ordered every ruin to be searched for the dead, human and animal. Smell and flies would be the signs of where to look and every scrap of rotting remains, however decayed, had to be dug out and carted to the beaches and burned. Some of the people protested but they were told that there was no time for burials and too few hands to dig graves. Prisoners were set to the task. Kanesh let them have rags to wrap across their faces and bindings for their hands and bunches of smouldering herbs collected by Amaia to fend off the sickness. He saw to it that they had enough rations too. When there were protests about this, Kanesh said he needed these men to live long enough and stay strong enough to do the work because there were no others who could. When the job was finished they were sent back to work under Dorejo’s command, clearing the streets and alleyways of rubble, setting aside useable stone for the masons and shovelling the rubbish onto carts to be hauled away and tipped over the cliff edge, into the Lagoon.
Sharesh had been so long in the cave that Namun began to feel something was wrong. He left Kerma in charge of the New Dolphin and climbed up the cliff to see for himself. He found Sharesh standing on a moss-covered ledge at the mouth of the cave, his face haggard with disappointment and despair. He was staring out across the Lagoon with eyes that did not see.
“This is our place,” he said. “I was sure she would come here. I can’t find her. Where is she, Namun?”
Namun took his hand. “I know where she’ll be. Come with me.”
They found her at Mitoia where she had been taken into the house of Alaron the fisherman who had lifted Koreta onto his back and carried him away to safety moments before the pirates burst into the Residence. His path down the cliffs passed near to the cave and he heard the sound of women’s voices. The boat was too small to take everyone but he kept his promise and came back for them, once Koreta and Apigoron had been left in the care of the people of Mitoia.
Two days later it was a happy ship that sailed past Korus, heading for the narrow strait that led to the open sea. Koreta had insisted on sitting in the bow, claiming with his tired smile that one eye was enough for a lookout who never slept. He had thought never again to have the boards of a ship beneath his feet and feel the spray thrown from her bow sting his face. He breathed the salt air in as deeply as he could and for a little while the pain left him.
The Lady Tuwea was concerned about her trees. She was sure the gardeners would not have done the watering properly when she was not there to watch them. Then there was the manservant on whom she relied for so much. He had swept her out of the back of the mansion just as those frightful pirates had broken in through the front entrance, and half-carried, half-dragged her down to the beach in the Lagoon and then up to that cave when the girls had called to them. He would not stay; said he had to look after things. To her surprise she found herself shedding a few tears at the thought she might not see him again. Such a silly name her husband had for him, cupbearer, as if he were a painting on the Palace walls. And now she thought of him, where was that husband of hers?
Kallia could hardly tell the story for laughing of how the Lady Tuwea was got up to the cave, protesting all the way about how her shoes were ruined, and with the manservant having to push her from behind.
“She didn’t seem to mind his hands on her backside; gave him quite a coy little smile in between arguing. She split her skirt. It was quite revealing but she didn’t notice. Then as soon as she was in the cave and he’d gone off, she started ordering us about. She told Teptria she looked a fright and Mara she was a mess. Me? Oh, she just gave me a look but I could see what she was thinking. How could we stand her? I’ve been thinking about that. It might have been her going on at us that kept our minds off bad things and she was the one who saw Alaron’s boat coming back for us. The rest of us were all asleep.”
Namun thought the lord would be pleased with what they had managed to do. The New Dolphin had called in at all the main waterside settlements, Balloso, Palaka, Lemaka, as well as a few solitary fishermen’s cabins, after she sailed from Mitoia. None of them had suffered as badly from the earth-shaking as Mitoia where two houses had fallen into the sea. A strange ship, taken to be one of the pirates, had caused great alarm when she was sighted in the narrows but, for some reason, she had turned back. The fear that the pirates would return stayed with them which was why most people had run off to the hills when the New Dolphin had appeared and the logs had been thrown off the jetty into the water to keep her away. There was great excitement when they were told of the fate of the pirates and in their relief they offered salt, grain, dried fish and even oil when the matter of the town’s plight was described. Koreta would allow only modest amounts to be accepted. He had the village people’s own needs for the winter in mind. But Namun was content. He reckoned with all the fish Leptos and Leptos had netted and what the villagers had handed over he had enough food on board to feed the town for a week; all right, only once a day but that should at least keep them alive until the Davina returned.
As the days went by, more and more people trickled back from their hiding places to see what was left of their homes in the town. Somewhat later, country people began to make an appearance, bringing welcome eggs, fowl, rabbits, barley and beans, some even driving a few goats or sheep before them for sale. Then, one morning, a boy came running down from the hill where the temple now lay in ruins, shouting that two ships were coming, one a long way ahead of the other. Everyone thought the Davina was back. But what could the other ship be?
“Warship,” said Potyr curtly when Kanesh asked him about the vessel which was still well out to sea when the Davina started unloading.
“We need cargo ships with men and supplies for us, not a warship.”
“Sekara thinks we do. He wants it known that she was sent to see me safe into port – you can see how well she performed that duty – and after that to seek out and destroy any other pirate ships that may threaten Kallista.”
“But from your voice I suspect you know otherwise.”
“The warship commander – you will remember him from Kestera – told me that he had been ordered to escort me back to Keftiu after he had made a show of looking for pirates.”
“If Sekara aims to hold you in Keftiu, why has he sanctioned this voyage? He cannot have been too pleased when we took the ship away from him, not to mention some of his archers.”
“News of what was done here has had some effect in Keftiu. Sekara knows the advantage of being seen a second time as the power behind a successful action against those who threaten Keftiu’s trade. I had to feign surprise at the number of merchants and commanders who were present with him at our sailing.”
“He is playing a devious game and we are pieces in it.”
“We are not the only ones. The commander has other orders: he is to take the two pirate leaders we captured back with him to Keftiu.”
“For interrogation and display, of course, but perhaps also for other devious purposes. Sekara knows as well as we do that these are not pirates. I have spent some time with the leader we captured in the town. He is son to a noble of considerable importance in his own land and was given command of the raid to prove his worth. Sekara is sure to find this out too, and when he does he will know that he has a useful hostage, certainly, and perhaps more importantly, after some appropriate persuasion, a more than useful negotiator. After all, as Koreta says, when one has the Labarna as a friend, one has need of other friends.”
“I have two days here,” said Potyr. “You know I must return to Keftiu.”
“I do. That is why he keeps her there.”
“Is there nothing
we can do?”
“Yes, spend a little time with Koreta. You will be surprised at how well he looks.”
Koreta was seated once more in his high-backed chair in its usual place, beside the window that looked towards the harbour.
“Never was a ship more welcome in our harbour than your own, Captain,” he said to Potyr, adding, “on both of its last visits.”
Potyr thought how much stronger the voice was and that for the first time Koreta had been able to turn in his chair to speak to him. Kanesh had been right.
“Sea air, Captain; best breathed in from the deck of a ship. Have you brought us any masons or carpenters? Smiths we have. Our recent visitors had a use for them, it seems. Wait one moment. I recognise that warship closing on the harbour. She must have something to do with your coming to see me. What news from Keftiu?”
Koreta sat thinking for a long time over what Kanesh and Potyr told him, then rang the silver bell on the table at his side.
“Apigoron, I know our visitors left us no wine, but perhaps you could bring a little cool water for my friends, and with it the chest from its space under the floor in the room where the scribe used to write. Alaron will help you.”
Kanesh and Potyr looked inside the chest after the fisherman had left the room.
“I have the tedious habit,” said Koreta, apologetically. “Of demanding that the scribe make a copy of every tablet he marks. It has proved useful on occasion when there was dispute over the content of a despatch. Here we have copies of what was sent to the Lord Sekara while you were away on the high seas. Were he to be made aware of their existence and that they might easily be disclosed to certain authorities in Keftiu, I think he would see it as expedient to reconsider his plans and be more cooperative.”