The Modern World (37 page)

I dashed through the gate and into the prickly frustration of the
forest’s edge. Their fleeing footsteps crackled far in front of me, deep between the trees. The cold leather of my sword grip was damp in my hand.

I saw pale flashes heading downhill. By god, the bastards were signalling at me! But it was only the reflection of the bonfire on their back plates and it soon vanished.

I found myself surrounded by a wall of fretted branches, hard cones, bending needles. They clutched my clothes but I pushed further and further in. Shadows and twigs looked like they could be … but they weren’t, when I got closer. I could hardly judge distances, over the nettles and around snarled brambles. Where the trees grew more densely packed, the ground was clear and springy with needles. I couldn’t see in the low space under the branches; it was pitch-black.

I ducked down and hesitated, trying to catch my breath. All was silent. The murderers could be anywhere; without faithful Lymer I would never find them. They had gone to earth, and even if I flushed them the forest was their world and they might have picked up longbows. I was more lost than I have ever been. I listened carefully, but I only heard wolf howls muted in the far distance.

The village’s bonfire backlit the trees. Numbly, I turned and stumbled to the palisade, to the clearing, and into the smokehouse, to Savory. Those craven murderers knew she could have beaten them, with her skinning knife and the desperation of self-defence, had they faced her. They had cut her down as she knelt to slice meat onto my plate.

As my dear wife fell she had upset a sack of kindling and there were pieces of bark all over her. I cleared them away and I turned her over. She was ghastly cold. I used my cloak for a pillow and closed her glazed hazel eyes gently. I kissed dear Savory.

The pointlessness of it unhinged me. I jumped up suddenly and ran out of the smokehouse, but the village was deserted. Everybody had bolted into their homes and wedged shut the boards serving as doors. ‘Savory is slain!’ I shouted. ‘Help me find the murderers!’

From inside came small sounds that told me they were busy with other tasks. They were hinting that I should stop causing a disturbance, stop bawling and go away. I stared around the clearing: the bonfire burnt down to a red ember murmur; a clutch of boar ribs on the table; an overturned cup on the bruised grass. Nothing indicated that minutes ago this had been a lively party.

I ran from cabin to cabin banging on the blank doors. ‘Help! Help me for god’s sake!’ But I could not speak the language properly; nor they mine. I hammered on the reeve’s door. ‘You know me, Asart! We must catch the murderers!’ No answer from within. I clapped my hand
flat over the sun brooch on my shoulder. ‘In the Castle’s name, I’m her husband! Tell me who the murderers are! I’ll bring my fyrd! Damn you all – help me or I’ll raze this village to the ground!’

What was I doing here? Here in the back of beyond? I should never have come to this filthy, tree-dark province at all. These folk had no inkling of my power. My palace where one of their daughters would have lived was no more than a tale to them. They valued their murderous traditions more highly than the distant Castle itself. Here I was the foreigner and how could they understand? With all the time in eternity I would not get through to them! I lost my mind and I curled up, faint, beside the fire.

At first light people emerged from their houses and went about their daily chores as if nothing had happened. I lay on my stomach on the wet grass watching abstractedly. They spoke not a word of Savory. They shut the events away and went on with tapping sap and lathing wood. How could they – when the world was shattered?

Years of blood feuds had bred in them a toleration like a collective sickness of the mind. They were quiet and cowed, but acted as if the random murder was fair and justified. She had been, after all, a Savory. Father Savory killed Pannage and was killed by Pannage’s grandson. So it went on. So it still goes on today.

Day only truly dawned on the village when the sun rose above the trees and slanted its rays down into the little enclosure. The dew began to vanish, though it remained, grey and sparkling, in the cobwebs, the palisade’s shadow and each hovel’s woodpile.

Two men, their sleeves rolled back, went into the smokehouse and brought out Savory on a stretcher. She was naked. They had stripped her naked. I felt a jolt as if I had been punched. My legs went weak but I stumbled to her and tried to cover her body with the cloak. The men put their arms out and blocked me. She was a pale sculpture, she lay on her long hair like a pelt, as red as the hair on her legs and sex. I had last seen her naked when – I had kissed her thighs and breasts – their disrespect was too much for me. ‘I’ll take her back to Awia! I’ll place her in my tomb!’

My pleas were cut short by the high squeal of a fiddle and a flute. The door of the nearest cabin flung open and the troupe of mummers tumbled out. They started dancing! They began to dance the old, false story where the King of Morenzia steals the King of Awia’s wife and Awia raises its fyrd to bring her back. The dancers whirled furiously around Savory’s stretcher, stamping either side as they acted out the
battle. The King of Awia was mock-stabbed by the human king, and he fell. The dancers all jumped on the fallen actor, their hands scrambling under his clothes. They brought out real human bones, all dry and painted black, and began to dance with them, clacking them together.

What did it mean? I had no idea but the dishonour was too much. I drew my sword and was about to set among them and slay every last man, when the reeve came out of his house.

He was wearing a mask. It was a human visage, of heavy white plaster, as if his own face had been smeared with thick paste, but for its blind eye sockets, in which were placed cowry shells. Their pursed toothy grooves made blind black lines. In the mouth of the mask real human teeth were set. No, not set: the mask was the front of a real skull, sawn off and covered in plaster. The rest of his clothes were normal and he came towards me walking confidently, as if he could see through some hidden contrivance in the mask.

Savory had introduced me to reeve Asart, the village leader, answerable to Lord Governor Aver-Falconet. He reports to Aver-Falconet’s steward twice a year. Why was he part of this abhorrent dance? Did Hacilith know? Did the Castle know? Of course they must, I wrested from myself. I am the only one ignorant of the Cathee, because nothing like this is written in the books of Awia’s libraries.

The rest of the village left their work or emerged from their cabins silently, as if at an agreed signal. The women in short shifts and rawhide aprons, the men in their plaids and breeches, they formed a silent queue behind the stretcher.

I stared around the log cabins, and now I could more clearly see their ornamentation. The heads above the doors were real skulls! They were covered in plaster, shells set in their eye sockets, and affixed with paste all around them to the surface of the logs. Their snaggling yellow teeth showed between carefully moulded lips.

I looked to the reeve’s house. The sculptures that I had taken to be women were whole articulated skeletons re-fleshed with plaster. It had flaked off here and there; I saw brittle weathered bone underneath. Their curves and features had been shaped, but where the breasts swelled over some woman’s ancient rib-cage, projecting instead of nipples from the plaster were the hooked and open beaks of vultures.

The reeve had by now left the gate and the rest were following. I stumbled behind, some distance from the rear of the procession. I had to see where they were taking Savory. The reeve, villagers and mummers still carrying bagpipes, flutes and bones pushed between the trees on a little-worn path, in complete silence.

We were walking uphill, but I could tell no more. All the forest looked the same to me and I could scarcely see it. My eyes were stinging, I was weeping freely, and trying to see through my tears as through an awash uneven glass. Savory was a white blur as the procession wound between the close phalanxes of dark green pines on either side. The twisting brambles at the trackside scratched me, held me back, and snatched loops of thread out of the damn plaid cloak.

At length we came to a clearing, and beyond the screen of trees I glimpsed a gigantic mound, grassed-over equally with the ground. It must be man-made because it was completely circular, some ten metres across and surrounded by flat black stones propped up against its circumference. Three huge undressed rocks at the front formed a portal, one resting horizontally on two uprights, from which a tunnel lined with slabs led into its lightless depths. A single stone, standing a metre in front of the entrance, obscured the passageway from my sight. I assumed this was their crude mausoleum, like my great family tomb, in which they would lay dear Savory, but the procession did not stop.

The villagers cast glances at the knoll as they passed by, with looks on their faces almost as if it reassured them – and even the reeve’s skull mask turned towards it for an instant.

The forest was now alive with birds cawing and skitterings in the undergrowth. I took the arm of the last man in the procession, who carried his toddler son on his shoulders: ‘What’s going on? Tell me, man!’

He shook me away with an angry sneer.

A great cloud of birds burst up out of the trees ahead, cracking through twigs and branches. They separated out; kites and buzzards began to circle but the big glossy ravens dropped back down into the tree tops further on.

A terrible stench of corruption rose with them and hit me with such strength I gagged. It was the fatty smell of putrefying human flesh, which I have often encountered on the battlefield. The villagers showed no concern. I pulled my handkerchief from my trouser pocket and pressed it over my nose.

We came up to a high log palisade, but the silence and the smell told me this was not another village. Its gate had a woman’s skeleton plastered to the centre. Its eye sockets shone dully with cowry shells and all its teeth were bared between open lips. Again, its breasts were sculpted with panting beaks instead of nipples.

The Cathee entered an enclosure where the short grass was free of saplings and in the centre a great wooden scaffold stood two metres high: a platform raised on six trunks stripped clean of bark. The top of the platform was not solid, it was a criss-cross of rough-hewn timbers. Shreds hung down between them. At first I thought the shreds were fabric but they did not move with the breeze. A large strip dangled through the grating, tasselled at the end – it was a human arm and hand.

They set down the stretcher next to the platform and gathered along it, standing in ragged fashion side by side. I remained in the shadow of the gate and watched.

The reeve stood by Savory’s head. She looked so peaceful, as if she was asleep, were it not for the outrage of her nakedness. The reeve climbed a rough ladder of logs, up to the platform and appeared high above us against the sky. He crossed towards the villagers looking up, but as he did so he accidentally kicked the arm. It was mostly bone, it swung and fell off, and up stirred the rank smell of carrion. My gorge rose and I hunched over and vomited. What were they doing to my wife? I fell to my knees and heaved again and again – till it hollowed me out.

They did not hand up the whole stretcher. There were no ropes nor pulley to raise it to the top of the platform with any sort of dignity. The two bearers just picked up Savory’s body, one holding her ankles, the other her upper arms. He grappled with handfuls of her hair. Stiffness had set in and they had to turn her body as they lifted her. I saw in a flash the pink line of her sex between her legs. The masked reeve bent and seized her round the ribs, manhandled her onto the platform and laid her down.

And then he descended and walked underneath the scaffold, beckoning the villagers to join him. They huddled together, bent over, and began to pick bones and teeth from among the grass. The women folded their skirts and gathered them inside, the men cradled handfuls. Up and down they walked in methodical lines as if harvesting, and any man who found two bones still articulated, pulled them apart with a twist and a yank.

They piled all the bones on the stretcher, and in silent procession like before, they carried the stretcher out past me, though I was on my knees and coughing up bile. I shrank from them but I had to follow or in their stony blindness they would have barred me in with the dead. The first few heavy ravens were swooping down with guttural calls from the trees to feed.

I trailed some distance behind the procession to the mouth of the
burial mound. They stopped by its portal, in a semi-circle. The reeve and stretcher-bearers slipped behind the stone screen and into the tunnel. They must have intended to deposit the bones in there.

I had seen enough. I spat and turned away, deranged. I ran back to the village, where I took a bow, a quiver-full of arrows and a spade. If any of the Cathee had tried to stop me I would have cleaved his head in two with it.

So they would take Savory, my Savory, and leave her to rot, feed her to vermin, then jumble her bones with everyone else’s? So they wanted to obliterate her identity until no one could recognise her remains? So they were content to forget her unique, intriguing life? What did that mean? What sort of people scrub out the honour of their ancestors? Their disrespect tore at my heart, cracked open and bleeding inside me. Savory is still a person, still my love. What is she to the Cathee? An empty vessel? No longer a woman, just an object that’s part of their past, that they will place with the rest and tidy away so life can go on? My life could not go on. My life had stopped. I thought of what we Awians do, with our glass carriages drawn by ebony-plumed horses. I thought of the vigil I kept over Mother’s lying-in-state, a drawn sword in front of me and my wings spread. How we exhibited the old bat as if she could still feel, in satin on the catafalque strewn with lilac and lavender and rue.