John Masters (6 page)

"I have come about the land," he said.

She raised her hand, the long nails black-lacquered. "The land
first?"
she asked.

Pendril hesitated. He did not want to make love to her at this moment. Later, yes, but not now while his corner of the Rock filled his thoughts and dominated his desires.

She rose and pulled him slowly to his feet. Her arms went around his neck. Her bare breasts pressed into him. Her tongue began to search his ear, and her breath came quicker.

Two hours later he began to pull on his short, coarse seaman's robe. The high priestess sat before a mirror, reapplying black around her eyes and red to her cheeks. "Who is the girl you brought here?" she asked.

"The wife of the shipowner," he said.

"Is she a passionate lover?"

"I do not know. I have not touched her.... About the land. The goddess does not use it. No one else wants it. I would build a shrine to her and pay for a great feast to all of you priestesses once, twice a year. I would dedicate to the goddess a tithe of whatever I make from the oysters. I would..."

She turned on her stool. Her nipples stood up like little towers, red-tipped. Her flat belly glistened with oil. She laughed up into his face. "You are a man among men, Pendril," she said. "The best lover I have known, and that is among some eight thousand— If we let you have that land, you will marry some plump cow. Instead of performing the divine rites to Astarte with me you will be seeding her fat belly. No!"

"Please permit me to buy the land," he said doggedly. "I will always come to you, as I do now. All our women know that marriage cannot alter the worship of Astarte."

She stood up and pointed her finger at him, the jewels jangling at her neck. "You shall have the land...."

He started toward her. "Queen!"

"Hold! The price is an apple. A golden apple of the Hesperides."

"But where? How?" he asked miserably.

"A naked woman sends you," she mocked. "And only another naked woman can lead you, a third pluck the apple from the tree, and a fourth bring you safe back home to claim your corner of the Rock!" Laughing high and loud, she disappeared through the curtains.

Pendril stood a long time staring at the purple and white stripes. A golden apple of the Hesperides. The islands where the sun goes down to lie with the sea. The sacred trees guarded by the daughters of the Creator.
A naked woman sends you.
He started violently.
And only another naked woman can lead you. Kedesha
was the name of Daniel's new galley; a
kedesha
was a priestess such as this Irauna whom he had known so long. The figurehead of the galley was a
kedesha,
a naked woman facing the waves with breasts upthrust, arms back, and legs twined around the stem of the ship, which disappeared into her body.

Pendril turned and hurried out of the temple.

Early in the afternoon the host at the inn stewed a fat dog with herbs, olives, onion, and wine; then Tamar rested and waited impatiently for Pendril to return. Toward dusk the people seemed to be wearing finer clothes, and there was an air of expectation to their movements. She heard distant shouts and orders and the tuning of stringed instruments. Men carried great wine vessels to and fro, and women set earthenware pots around the houses and lit the rope wicks in them so that they gave out a smoky reddish light. At the edge of the river and in the open place outside the temple to Astarte, boys lit fires. The fires grew larger, the dark beyond more dense and impenetrable. Shapes passed, embracing, and still Pendril did not come.

When at last he came, she saw that he had been drinking. He had a small wineskin which he held up at arm's length, squeezing a jet of wine into his mouth, then, although she protested, into hers.

"Come," he said thickly. "Come to the feast, the dance...." His gold earrings shook, glinting in the red light.

She went with him then, to the rites of Midsummer's Eve. The time, like the people, passed with gradually increasing pace and passion. For the first hour she felt like a sleepwalker, gliding very slowly, one of a race of sleepwalkers. Then she moved more briskly and they, too, and the songs grew louder and louder, and faster the twanging of the plucked strings from the temple, and taller the fires, tall as men, and the young men began to jump over and through them, running, calling to each other, then leaping, and afterward shouting again in triumph. The wine splashed in her face, and a string snapped in her head. Her feet moved, faster, faster the drummer pounded, sweating, and suddenly there were women in serpent headdresses of gold and silver and with necklaces between their breasts dancing in front of the temple. They were naked, silver belling on their ankles, breasts jerking, bellies pulled in, mounds of love thrust forward. They sang, the fires roared higher. With a shriek a naked man ran by her and leaped like an antelope through the top of the fire. The people gasped, a priestess wrapped herself around him, and in a moment, as the dancer slowly swung, her feet spread wide, her body arched far back, Tamar saw that the man had entered her. They shuffled thus, locked, the man's face straining.

The priests came out, chanting. She heard snatches of Hebrew, the sacred names of Jehovah, other languages, other names, other gods. There was kneeling and bowing before images of Sun, Moon, Stars, Winds, Clouds. The Golden Calf gleamed inside the temple, its doors now flung wide. The child that would be sacrificed at dawn sat enthroned in gold and silver finery, its eyes feverish and bright, its Ups parted in excitement. All around her there was dancing and lovemaking. She stood pressed against a house, her palms damp against the wood. The fire burned her face, and the sweat poured down her body. She trembled with the sounds about her—the groans of women, the chant of the dancers, the shriek of a boy missing his leap and falling into the fire, the smells of flesh, wine, lust.

The high priestess appeared before them, legs widespread. Her eyes shone into Tamar's, worming down into the secret parts of her body. "Greetings, Jewess," she said softly. "What do you seek here?"

"Nothing," Tamar muttered.

"A man, I think? You are an empty vessel, quaking to the touch. There is a strong man beside you. Take her, Pendril. Show her how the children of Astarte serve the goddess. Go!"

Pendril's voice was thick and deep. "You want me?"

"She does not want you," the priestess said. "She
needs
you."

"No," Tamar cried. "I have a husband."

Pendril said, "In name. I lie too close, with only the canvas curtain between us. He never touches you."

"Why do you think he sent you here with Pendril?" the priestess said. "Because he wants another man to calm you, that he may sleep in peace...."

"Yes!" Tamar burst out. Then, aghast at what she had learned and said, she turned and stumbled away. It was dark by the river, and she heard him running behind her. She slowed and, at the edge of the wood, turned, her back to a tree, her hands clutching it. She waited, her heart pounding.

He came slowly to her, and she closed her eyes. Her skin trembled, and there was a sudden warm wet release at her loins.

He said, "I spoke ill. I am sorry. The high priestess does not understand such as you. Come. Let us go back to the ship."

Gradually her heart stilled, the trembling stopped, and she felt cold and alone. She began to cry. He said gently, "Walk. You will feel better."

Now clouds obscured the moon, but a little light filtered through. She walked at his side in a gusty wind along the sand toward the milky loom of the Rock.

"Where did you meet your husband?" Pendril asked.

"In Carthage," she said, sniffling. "I was seven when Jerusalem was sacked. His father lived close to my uncle, and they were rich. They are of the tribe of Zebulon but do not keep the Law. We grew up together...

"And married—how long?" he asked.

"Three years."

"And you are—twenty-one?"

"Twenty."

A flash of lightning lit the Rock, thunder boomed around the bay, and he broke into a trot. The lightning grew more frequent, more thunder rolled in through the strait. Pendril gabbled prayers under his breath as they passed under the sacred grove and the magic cavern of Hercules, and Tamar felt better, even smiling to herself at his superstition. As the first huge drops of rain began to fall, they reached the western beach.

"Up into the cave," Pendril said. "They will never hear me calling in this."

They sat down deep inside the cave while the rain poured down outside and lightning flashes momentarily painted the
Kedesha
a more livid blue against the greenish sea.

Pendril said, "I was going to say, before the thunder began, stay in Carteia, Tamar. Tell your husband you do not want to go to the Tin Islands. He will be pleased and relieved. I know it."

"But I
do
want to go," she said. "I am weary of staying at home, caged like a pet bird alone. We have no child. I insisted that I come on this journey, and I shall go to the end."

"There is nothing to see in the Tin Islands," he said. "The savages there eat pigs! Their temples are nothing but circles of great stones. There is always fog and rain. The sea between here and there is always rough."

"I go!" she said.

"Very well," he said. "So be it. It will rain all night. All on the
Kedesha
are below and asleep. Take this—" He gave her his cloak. "Sleep there. Have no fear of me."

She thought she would lie awake all night with the thunder and lightning, memories of the rites, consciousness of what she had said and so nearly done. It was not her own will or virtue that had saved her from adultery but this man, strange, brutal, sometimes gentle, practical but filled with visions and dreams of this magical Rock, brave but superstitious, ignorant but skillful. And he was lying there so close to her that...

His hand was on her shoulder. "Wake up. They have seen me. The sun is rising, it has stopped raining, and the wind is in the east."

She stood up, yawning and stretching and put her hands to her hair. Then she straightened her robe, but when she tried to refasten it, she found that the little bronze brooch was gone.

"I have lost my brooch," she said. "It must be here, though, because I remember feeling it when we reached the foot of the path last night."

"Look quickly, then," Pendril said. "They are launching the
hippos
and making ready to up-anchor."

She hurried about the cave, down to the beach, back up, but saw nothing. She began to dig with her fingers where she had slept.

He said, "The
hippos
is here. And they are hoisting the sail. Idiots!"

She touched something hard and cried, "I have it! No, this is not it."

"Come," he said, this time as a command. She pulled the hard thing out of the earth and followed. She held in her hand a fang, six inches long, with a hole bored through the thick end. She held it out to Pendril. "What animal is this from?"

He turned it over curiously. "None that I know. It might be a boar's, but they are more curved than this. It is much too small for those great beasts I have seen in Egypt. It has been used, worn around a woman's neck perhaps?"

The
hippos
danced and sidled to the galley, the sun warmed her, the rut and shame of the night passed into dream.

Pendril pushed her up on board and followed. As soon as his foot hit the deck, he shouted, "Down sail! This wind will blow us straight onto the cliffs, Daniel. We can hoist when we have cleared the point, not before. Rowmaster, ready? Stand by the steering oar. Row, starboard side.... Row all."

The
Kedesha
began to move through the sea, at first as heavily as a pregnant woman, then gliding like an oiled dancer. Pendril watched the cliffs and caves pass. Soon Irauna would see the figurehead and realize that two of the four parts of her prophecy had already come to pass. As to the rest, that he must leave to the goddess. He had his own work to do, and since he was only a human, it would be more difficult and more liable to failure. But he could only do his best.

Two days later, heavily loaded with amphorae of water and barrels of flour, dried fruit, salt meat, and pickled fish, the
Kedesha
swam away from the jetty of Carteia and headed into the bay, bound for the Tin Islands. As they passed the towering northern cliff of the Rock, Pendril murmured a prayer to Astarte to help him possess that gray-green corner by the blue water. A cloud began to" form over the crest as soon as he had finished, and he muttered to the new man at the steering oar, "An omen, Tregan." Tregan and another called One-Eye were men he had hired in Carteia to replace two Carthaginians he had dismissed for drunkenness and insubordination.

The great pillars fell astern, and at last the rise of the land hid all but the cloud over the Rock. Soon that too sank below the hills. They were on the ocean. Night fell.

Soon after dawn the man at the steering oar called down, "Cape Astarte abeam, Pendril." Pendril was already wide awake and now rolled quickly up the ladder to the poop and called, "All sailors aft, and Rowmaster, you too."

They shuffled aft, rubbing sleepy eyes. The slaves awoke and stretched on their benches. Tamar came up with Daniel, her hair streaming to the breeze. Pendril looked east and saw the stone building that was the temple of Astarte on the point. The cape was low and sandy, a hill covered with trees set behind it. The waters always ran steep and disturbed off this point, and strange fish often came to the surface here. It was a place inhabited by the gods, and Pendril muttered another prayer and threw a piece of bread onto the water.

"You have called us all here to say prayers?" a sailor cried, laughing.

"No," Pendril said. "It is more than that." He saw that Tregan was at the poop ladder, the lower part of his body hidden. One-Eye was here, rummaging in an old crate beside the steersman. All was ready.

Pendril stepped behind the steersman, took the knife out of his belt, and tossed it overboard.