Sarum (26 page)
Authors: Edward Rutherfurd
When the red harvest moon appeared, no one at Sarum rejoiced any more, as they used to do.
“See,” people whispered, “Krona has filled the moon with blood.”
None of Krona’s girls conceived. The priests sacrificed nineteen of them.
Krona knew, for nothing was hidden from him, that the priests still performed secret rites to the sun god. Many times he summoned the High Priest to him and raged:
“You make the moon goddess angry!” And each time that another girl failed to conceive he shouted: “This is all your fault.” Several times he became so angry that Dluc feared for his life, but even in his rage Krona hesitated to strike down the High Priest. And it occurred to Dluc that perhaps even in his madness, the chief was still secretly afraid of the sun god.
The work on the new Stonehenge went on. But with what a change! The men no longer sang hymns as they dragged the sarsens over the chalk ridges: they were silent and sullen; even Nooma’s masons had to be watched carefully.
“Sarum is cursed,” they said. “What’s the use of building a new temple?”
And sometimes the priests had to whip the labourers to make them approach the sacred grounds at all.
Somehow faithful Nooma, his solemn face serene, his little hands always busy, led the masons and kept them all at work. But despite the beauty of the new building, which was already become apparent, it was often a long and bitter task, and sometimes when he was alone in the henge at night, the High Priest would cry out into the sky:
“Give me a sign, Sun and Moon – give me some sign, at least, that we are doing your will.”
Nearly five years of Krona’s madness had passed when Dluc sacrificed the nineteenth of his luckless victims. She was little more than a child – a dark haired, dark eyed, creature with a pretty little red mouth. Her terror when she was dragged from her parent’s hut to the house on the hill was heart rending. Dluc had seen her with Krona twice in the three months she was allotted to give him an heir and watched her pathetic attempts to please him, which the chief accepted with a coldness that was terrible. He knew that it was said that a woman who is frightened is more likely to conceive; but in the case of Krona’s women, it seemed to make no difference. When Dluc slit her throat, her wild, child’s eyes gazed up at him as though to ask: “Why?”
And to that question the High Priest knew that he had no answer.
When Katesh looked back, she could no longer say exactly when her painful love had begun. Was it on that first day when he had paddled the canoe that took her with her husband to her new home in the valley? She remembered that he had quietly hummed as they went along. Had he looked at her?
But no, she was sure it was not then.
Was it one of the times when she had seen his tall, handsome figure hovering over the little mason as they discussed the building of the henge? Or when once she had seen him throw back his powerful head to laugh, and she had noticed the shape of his mouth, turned up to the sun? Was it one of these times?
She did not think so.
Surely then it was the time when he had sung, after the naming of Noo-ma-ti, when his voice had seemed to caress the circle of people round the fire and when, as Nooma’s head had fallen sleepily on her shoulder, she had found herself looking straight into his eyes, so clear and understanding.
Yet she did not think it was even then, nor when he had rescued her baby in the river.
No, it was that night after the harvest when, though they had hardly looked at each other all evening, she had known that he would come to her.
And since then – it seemed to her that once the process of her passion had begun, nothing in the world could be more beautiful than her pain.
Nooma had been suspicious, that first night. But he had found no trace of Tark in the woods, nor of his canoe in the river; and finally he had decided that, after all, he must have been mistaken.
In the months that followed, as Sarum plunged into gloom after the death of Raka, she had done all she could to make the mason happy and she had been careful to avoid Tark. Several times she went with Nooma to the henge and admired the work as the sarsens continued to rise.
And indeed it was a remarkable sight. For already, a quarter of the arches were up, and the mason moved briskly about in the dust, directing everything.
“My husband is a great man,” she said to him on these occasions, and walked obediently behind him to let the labourers know that the mason was respected by his wife.
The winter passed, and the spring. She looked after her husband and child and even believed for a time that she had forgotten Tark.
The following summer, when Krona had already taken the fourth of his victims, Nooma went to the sarsen site and stayed there for two months.
When Tark came up the path, she thought of hiding; but instead she gathered her courage, stepped forward and greeted him politely. He was respectful.
“I bring a message from Nooma. He will be at the site for another month. There is much work.”
She nodded. With Krona’s rages and the anxiousness of the priests, Nooma was especially careful to see that no criticisms could be made of his work on the henge.
“I thank you, Tark,” she replied correctly. And as custom required, she offered him food and drink.
Sensing her thoughts, Tark sat at a distance from her, and spoke generally of the henge, of events at the harbour, and of the rumours about Krona and his wives.
Cleverly he interested her so that gradually she forgot her reserve. She had been left alone for a long time and she began to ply him with questions: What did the merchants say about Sarum? Were the priests satisfied with the work on the henge?
For a long time they spoke, and his answers to her questions fascinated her; the shadows were already lengthening when he rose to go.
Two days later he came again. This time she was less reserved.
Two days after that, just after dusk had fallen, she heard the faint sound of his paddle in the river below, and knew that he would come to her.
Even then, after they had kissed passionately and moved inside, she paused. The reproachful figure of the mason rose up before her eyes. If she did this thing, how she would hurt him; and what terrible punishment would the gods visit upon her?
She trembled, turning her face away from Tark, not daring to look at him. But now, having got so far, she realised that she wanted the riverman with a pain that she could hardly endure, and so at last, letting her clothes fall from her, she turned her naked body towards him with a little cry.
“Ease my pain.”
The passion of Katesh took place that summer and, when Nooma returned to supervise the hauling of the sarsens, the autumn that followed it.
She came to know every feature of the riverman’s body, became obsessed by it.
Sometimes her fear of the gods, and of her husband if he found out, caused her to tremble. But then the memory of her lover’s touch, the shape of the back of his neck as he laughed, his soft eyes and gentle voice, obliterated everything else. She longed to have his child, to flee with him over the sea; but all this she knew was impossible: she would only steal a dangerous and forbidden passion during the dark days and nights of Krona’s rage at Sarum.
And the danger was very great.
“Krona’s spies are everywhere,” she would say. “If we are seen and reported to the priests . . .”
“I am careful,” Tark assured her. “We shall not be seen.”
For under the laws of Sarum, if a husband could prove to the priests that his wife had lain with another man, she was sacrificed to the gods, while the other man was liable to pay the cuckolded husband a heavy fine.
When she thought of this, Katesh shook her head in terror and moaned to herself:
“Why did the gods not give me another husband?”
Tark was so different from the little mason. Sometimes he would lean back, the silky black hairs on his chest catching the light from the taper, stretch all his limbs like a cat, and she would mount him with a little gasp of joy while he slowly smiled; then she would tell him to be still while she rhythmically moved and stretched herself, arching back, upon his taut body. But above all, she loved simply to hold him in her arms, glancing from time to time into his soft, sleepy eyes, and cradling the powerful head that relaxed, when he slept, so that it often seemed to her like that of a child.
Unlike Nooma, Tark was a skilful lover, who took his time. He was so gentle, she thought, feeling her, teasing her, encouraging her to come again and again.
When the mason came home, she did her best to appear pleased to see him. She submitted to his lovemaking and tried to make him happy, as before.
She was sometimes almost overcome with guilt at what she had done with Tark, and again and again promised herself that it would stop. But each time that Nooma departed, and she saw the riverman, her resolve broke down once more.
It was in early winter that she made the terrible discovery that she might be pregnant.
Nooma had been away for a month. Now the gods would punish her!
“He will discover!” she cried. And she wept bitterly for the pain she would cause the worthy mason who had given her, in his clumsy, well-meaning way, nothing but kindness.
“He will give me to the priests,” she wailed. She deserved such a fate, she knew, but it was terrible to think of it.
Then Tark told her what she must do.
The next day, Nooma was surprised when his friend came striding across the ridges to where the gangs of men were hauling the sarsens; and still more surprised when Tark took him to one side.
“Let me supervise the labourers,” he said. “The work at the henge is being badly done. Go there at once and supervise it or the priests will begin to complain.”
Grateful for the advice, Nooma set off at once and when he got to the henge, although he could see no signs of bad work that would have caused immediate complaint, he noticed a number of small mistakes the masons were making and corrected them at once.
“That Tark is more of a perfectionist than I,” he chuckled to himself.
He was glad that he had come back. For when he reached his home, an extraordinary change had come over Katesh.
He was completely unprepared for the reception that awaited him. When he first arrived, she prepared food for him as usual while he sat by the fire in the doorway of the hut and played with his son. But while he ate, he noticed her looking at him in a way that was new; and that night when they lay together, she made love to him with a passion unlike anything that she had ever shown before.
The next night the same thing-occurred again. And the next. It seemed that suddenly his wife had fallen violently in love with him; and the little mason, though he was astonished, rubbed his little hands together with joy. Now, when he told her about the wonder of the henge, or his work with the stones, or the problems he had overcome with his masons and labourers, instead of nodding absently, as she had usually done before, her face was full of admiration and she would ask him to tell her more.
“My husband is the greatest mason in the whole island,” she would smile. “All Sarum says so.”
And the mason was gratified that his young wife appreciated him.
All that winter, Nooma experienced an excitement and happiness that was even greater than that of the first year of their marriage. Katesh did everything she could to please him; and at nights her moans and cries of passion aroused him to new heights. Then, in the spring, he saw to his joy that at last his hopes had been realised and that Katesh was pregnant again; when he felt her belly with his strong little hands and kissed her, Katesh smiled at him happily, whispering:
“I think we shall have many more.”
Early in the summer, Nooma gave a sheep to the priests for his new child.
While all Sarum suffered under Krona’s madness and while the girls continued to be sacrificed, Nooma went quietly about his business with a happiness that it seemed nothing could shake.
His greatest delight at that time was to take his son with him to the henge. The boy was such an exact replica of his father that even the priests would smile with amusement as the two bandy-legged figures, one a diminutive version of the other, waddled around the henge to survey the work. Noo-ma-ti had quick little hands and loved to model figures with the clay his father brought him.
“He will be a master craftsman,” Nooma told the priests proudly. “Better than me.”
He would show the tiny boy the great sarsens he had made, running his hands over them lovingly and explaining the properties of the grey stone.
“You will learn to work stone,” he told the boy, “and to love the henge.”
For as the years had passed, the henge itself had begun to exercise a fascination upon the mason. Normally he would never have been allowed inside the earth circle, but his building work took him into the most sacred precincts so often that he grew used to the place and the ways of the priests. He came to love the broad encircling bank, the silent sanctum within, and the great avenue that pointed like an arrow at the dawn on the horizon. At the end of the day’s work, when dusk fell and the masons and labourers laid down their tools and departed, Nooma would often linger there, quietly tolerated by the silent priests as they went about their nightly tasks. The henge, he realised, had a strange, echoing quality about it when one stood inside and the light receded from the empty sky above. Was it the wide circle of the chalk bank? Was it the sarsens as the temple neared completion? He could not say; but he knew that it affected him.
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