The World Above the Sky (17 page)

The constellation Aquarius dominated the glittering dome.

“That which awaits...” Eugainia raised her arm. “Begins.” She passed her open hand across the star-field.

In the black of the night Aquaria, The Water Bearer, Eugainia's celestial sign and symbol, emerged as though a child had drawn lines linking each defining star. Eugainia opened her palm. High above, Aquaria tipped her star-stone vessel. Stars poured forth, cascading down like water. Shafts of light shot earth ward, pierced the atmosphere, flashed to the horizon where they pulsed and died.

Eugainia swept her arms through three hundred and sixty degrees of horizon. A jagged corona of wavering light—translucent layers of red, violet and green—rose like flame halfway to the zenith where it hung, pulsed, shimmered, crackled with a dry, unearthly sound.

Sir Athol gasped at the beauty of the illusion. His attention was focused heavenward when Eugainia suffered a sharp stab of pain to the stomach. I'm poisoned by the old man's spawn, she thought. Either I or it shall die. The spasm passed. Eugainia continued as though neither the miracle nor sudden agony had just occurred.

“What, Sir Athol, do you think when you hear the word
love
?”

Athol brought his attention back to
Reclamation
, a fragile craft on the endless sea. “Ah...love?”

“Yes. Love. I've had my say. What do you make of it?”

“Love, My Lady,”Athol answered with no hesitation, “is simple kindness. I dare say love is simple kindness.”

“Yes,” she said. “Then let me ask this...of whom do you think when I say the word?”

“I think of my wife, God be with her.”

“God is with her.” Eugainia placed a hand on her belly. “Not your children?”

“No. A child's love is simple and direct. No thought required. Endless worry, I'd say. But no doubt. One returns a child's affection automatically, with the ease with which it is offered.”

“Different from the adult's love for the other....Which I sense will be entirely familiar and mysterious as a magnet.”

“Aye. A love of one's own—a wife or, I suppose, a husband—is hard-won and not to be taken for granted. Yes. I say a love of one's own, my Lady, is a complex thing. A treasure when lost, a trial when upon you. My Lady. If I may be so bold. Your husband?”

“Lord Ard? No, no. Mistaken signs. False visions. An error made by Morgase, compounded by Lord Henry. Then sanctioned by an overweening sense of duty, gut instinct ignored, by me.”

“And this child you carry?”

“Never a king, alas. A servant, I think. If it survives. If not, an unhappy memory. Sired in despair, nurtured by regret.” She lightly covered Sir Athol's hand with hers. She kept her greatest fear to herself. The child was poisoning her. She prayed she'd see the New World shore. “In my heart of hearts I feel the time for regrets has past. God awaits Goddess. I tell you Athol Gunn, I can barely breathe when I think of it! Please God he'll be young and virile. Morgase said he would. And in good health. Thank you for listening, good Sir Athol.”

“My great pleasure, m'am.”

“Goodnight, my friend.”

Sir Athol bowed low. “Good night, My Lady.”

Eugainia paused at the aft-castle curtains. She passed her hand across the sky. The Aurora Borealis collapsed to the horizon, flickered once and was gone. Aquarius, her vessel upright and, Athol presumed, refilled, stood waiting still and silent in the black of the northern sky.

Athol fixed his attention on the polar star. He adjusted
Reclamation
's course. She sailed west by southwest, inching closer wave by furrowed wave to the promise of the New World.

From that night forward, the Lady of Grail occupied Sir Athol Gunn's waking thoughts and frequently visited his dreams, where they spoke of these and many things.

• • •

On Kluscap's Cliffs across Turned Up Whale Belly Bay, Henry and Athol awaited the turn of the tide.

“Where better, I thought, to start afresh. We're an ocean away from the stench of Rome.”

“I'm surprised you're letting him go.”

“What choice have I? Zeno fulfilled his side of the bargain. One sniff of our dilemma, Athol, our
raison d'Ítre
gone...well, aside from the danger, the gloating would've been intolerable.”

“Aye. He has what he needs. We have no further use of him.”

“We've no need of France or England, or Scotland, come to that. We need Eugainia. Our venture is pointless without her.” Henry turned his back on
Reclamation
. “Let the little merchant go, and be damned.”

A slight rise afforded a clear view to the west. Henry stooped to pull a shaft of grass. “The world of women and men advances toward the common good, I once told Eugainia. I felt her words as I heard them. ‘Yes, the world flourishes for a time in peace and harmony then collapses in upon itself,' she said. ‘Dreams of equality and fraternity in an ordered earthly garden flourish. But only for a time. Evil fails where good prevails. It's a cycle older than Adam.' She was six years old at the time. How does she know such things?”

“She's divine,” Athol replied. “She has benefited from your stewardship. She has had a thorough education. She's well travelled. Well read. She's inquisitive. She's fit as a she-bear. She's well equipped to thrive in any circumstance.”

Well equipped by me to betray me, Henry thought. A man born to rule must have a kingdom. Eugainia's provocation, and the baffling enormity of the stage upon which his response would unfold, threatened to undo Henry. The mortal union of Goddess and God should have prompted a great feast of celebration. The intolerable and inevitable fused, rumbled through his imagination shooting bolts of light and rolling tonnes of thunder.

“What made her think it's Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk?”

“Who but the Goddess can know her God?”

Henry drew his cloak tight against a sudden gust of chill October wind. Athol might be right.

“Lord help us. This promontory will be no fit place for man or beast come winter.”

“We'll need a clear view down the bay,” Athol offered. “I say we build a simple stone sentry post here.”

“Good. Then set up shop near the ruins.”

“Aye. Get about the business at hand, not brood on what might or might not be. That's the answer, laddie.”

Henry smiled in spite of himself. Athol felt the air between them warm a degree or two.

“If what we're told of winter here is true, we'll need everything The People have to offer. What's the final count?”

“After extracting Zeno's crew?” Athol consulted a tightly rolled parchment. “One blacksmith stayed behind. The seven master carpenters. One joiner. Three stonemasons. Four journeymen glaziers. No apprentices. Henry, I fear—”

“Yes. I know your feelings on the matter. Barely enough to restore the castle. If they wouldn't stay of their own free will, I've no use for them.”

Athol changed his tack. “The young adventurers, those young lads of Keswalqw's soon got the hang of
Reclamation
. One quick turn around the southwest peninsula, a round trip to and from the mouth of Turned Up Whale Belly Bay here,
et voilà
! Skilled sailors every one. Mind, they're natural mariners, these Pictook folk. Those great seagoing canoes of theirs. And the way they take a whale! I have no doubt....Along with our own good lads they'll see, I say, they'll see the little admiral home.”

“We'll see about that. In any event, we're well rid of him.”

“Aye. We are that. Eugainia will come to her senses and return, Henry. You'll see. The Grail Castle will be restored. Our Lady will be installed. Come spring, your family will join us.”

“And the great work will begin.” Henry glanced down at
Reclamation
. “I see the bowsprit's clean.”

“Aye. Our Lady's likeness has been removed. As directed.”

“A gaping hole of indifference where once Our Lady showed the way.”

Shouts from the beach, then an angry man's cries, rattled up the rocks. The wails of a woman's grief ricocheted across the water and rose, magnified by an updraft of wind.

Antonio, bound and gagged, trussed and poled like a hog for slaughter was lowered from the rail of the
Reclamation
into a waiting canoe.

“It appears we're not quite rid of the little admiral yet,” Henry observed.

Two crying children, a boy and a girl, were handed down from the ship to their parents' arms. Soon after, three of the young warriors who'd answered Antonio's call to adventure, were manhandled, bound and gagged, into a hastily lowered coracle. The seriousness of their crime precluded the use of a canoe: a coracle, a “soup bowl” so-called by The People would bear their shame to shore.

Keswalqw and her clanswomen waited on the beach. The Piktook men materialized at the edge of the woods, as if from air. They stood shoulder to shoulder, a discreet wall of force. The women formed two parallel lines. Each woman brandished a rod stout as her thumb, the length of her arm. They waited in silence.

One by one the young men were manhandled from the coracle onto the sand. Keswalqw stripped the disgraced young warriors of their ill-fitting mariner's clothes. With a shove to the back and a well-aimed moccasin, she booted the naked traitors forward into the mouth of the gauntlet, one at a time in quick succession. The women raised their rods and set upon the young men. No mercy was expected. None was shown. They stumbled from one well-aimed cut to the next, unable to right themselves before the next blows, which came in pairs, fell hard upon them. They bore their welts with failing arrogance, heads and backs fully exposed, their genitals protected by cupped hands, the backs of which were soon split and bloody. Keswalqw waited at the end of the alley of shame, her unhappy task to land the final blows. The outcasts emerged trembling, bruised purple, bleeding, bowed and broken. Their past lay naked and bloodied upon them; the present—the promise of The People to nurture and protect them—lay desolate, as far beyond comfort as the cloudless sky to which they raised eyes awash in dreadful comprehension. The past was dead. The present lost. The future beckoned no more.

Keswalqw threw back her head and howled. A wail arose from the women. Grief pitched eerily high broke the young men's hearts.

From the throat of every man, woman and child rose a tribal howl—a collective cry of shame. A single resonant collective tone emerged, quavered, hung in the air as though uttered by one voice.

The young men joined the cry, the final commune between them and their clan. Henry's heart went cold. The earth itself seemed to turn its stony back, sullen and flayed, on the disgraced young men. They would no longer walk in peace upon the good earth; nor would they, without the love and comfort of The People, wish to exist upon it, supposing each could find the strength and means to live alone. Death, when it found them, would carry a double disgrace. The insatiable giant
Chenoo
, cannibal spirit/man, an outcast Ghost Person, stalked these wild woods hungry for love and the taste of human flesh. His glare would transfix the castaway young men. His bite would transform them—those he did not smother and devour outright—into one of his kind. Better dead, it was agreed, than to become one such as him.

The young men walked, bloodied and naked, each in his own direction, to a shared fate he must endure alone. Their complicity with Antonio Zeno, merchant-adventurer, zealot, despoiler and thief would lead them to a quiet place in the forest where they would lay down and, through sheer force of will, empty themselves of their
Kji-kinap
, their Power. They would return their still vigorous, untried spirits to the World Above the Sky. The flesh of their strong young bodies would nurture the Earth World. As time, scavengers and the eternal turning of the seasons wrought final transformation, the residue of their shamed flesh—none would raise their remains to the safety of the trees—would sink unmourned into the World Below the Earth until all that remained was their unloved bones.

Keswalqw glanced up to the promontory where Athol and Henry watched. She stripped Antonio of his clothing. A slip-knotted noose, at the end of a stout, braided moosehide rope, tightened around his neck. Keswalqw led the Venetian noble, calf to the slaughter, to the foot of the cliffside path and up the promontory.

Henry and Athol moved to the edge of the forest plateau where the path opened before them. Ancient shadow pillars stood in judgment, their twisted roots protruding from mats of bracken fern and moss. The canopies of frost-killed ash and oak cast soft golden light on The People's dark purpose.

Angry taunts and cries preceded Keswalqw and her prisoner. She emerged briefly as the path curved up and over a granite outcrop. She reappeared in the high meadow, the rope slung over her shoulder.

Antonio stumbled into view. Keswalqw dragged him forward. Alternately taught and slack, his tether trailed on the ground, snapped to singing tension when he faltered. Village children landed running blows on the naked merchant's buttocks with the women's stout ash switches.

Antonio stumbled to an unbalanced halt. The hide rope marked the flesh of his neck. Keswalqw aimed a blow to the back of his legs. Antonio fell to his knees in front of Henry. Keswalqw grabbed a scruff of hair and flung him face forward. The arch of her moccasined foot, pressed tight to the base of his skull pinned him, right cheek to the ground, mouth splayed open, grit in his teeth, the earth raw and pungent on his tongue.

Antonio squirmed. Keswalqw shifted her weight. Antonio winced, alert as a snared ferret, his attention fixed on the back of his neck, awaiting the fatal snap.

Keswalqw lifted her foot, jerked the bight end of the rope taut. Antonio's head snapped up. His mouth lolled open. His eyes rolled with fear. The abducted children stood silent nearby, their aggrieved parents distraught but calm. Keswalqw coiled the rope, taking time to form loop after perfect loop.

At Keswalqw's signal, Plawej, the bright, shy boy who had become a favourite of Henry's, and Eugainia's forthright little friend, Mn'tmu'k, nicknamed Oyster Girl for her love of the bivalves, stepped forward. They stood beside Keswalqw, quiet and shy. Keswalqw spoke slowly, distinctly, in carefully considered English. “Listen closely, 'Enry Orkney. I'll speak in what I have come to know of your tongue, and hope you will hear what little you have come to know of mine.”

Henry nodded.

“This serpent stole our...” She indicated the children, a word Henry knew was in their shared vocabulary. “How do you say in your language…?”

“Keswalqw, you know the word for child—”

“Yes.” She held his eye. “I know the word for children.”

“Let me assure you,” Henry countered. “We stand with you here in shared pain and sorrow, and acknowledge the gravity of the offence.”

“Mn'tmu'k, not six winters,” she continued, “and her brother, Plawej, not yet five, stolen from these good people who love them more than life itself...wrapped so tight in beaver robes they could hardly breathe. Their mouths were gagged.” She inserted a finger under Antonio's gag. “Like this.” She wrenched it. He yelped. “Their little hands bound.” She gripped the leather thong binding Antonio's hands together behind his back and yanked, splaying his shoulder blades upward and out to the side. “Like this.” Antonio inhaled sharply. Keswalqw released the pressure. Antonio groaned.

“Our children, Henry Orkney. He wished to steal the sacred gifts of the Creator. Our children! He plundered our burial ground. He stole the bones of our Old Ones. And their spirit gifts. Loaded them on your ship, with his bags of yellow stones. I want to kill this serpent man, your An'to'ni'o. I want to feed his flesh to the dogs. I want to spit upon his ghost, and scatter the ashes of his bones to the four winds. But he is not one of The People. He is yours. And you are my friend.”

“May we remove the gag?”

“I will not touch him. Unless to slit his throat.”

“May Sir Athol?”

Keswalqw nodded her assent. Athol removed the gag.

“Answer the charge, Antonio.”

“I only thought to show The Holy Father...the bones and trinkets, for the Vatican Museum.”

“Bones? Trinkets?” Keswalqw squatted, raised Antonio's chin. She caught and held his eye. She fumbled with the strings of a doehide pouch. She withdrew a black disc, thick on one side, tapering on the other to a thin, slicing edge.

This was no ordinary palm-knife used to gut carcasses or scrap hair from hides. Nor was its purpose personal or domestic. Its purpose was ceremonial. The blade's extreme edge assured swift and merciful dispatch. Keen, shining, a black night of obsidian, the blade had come to Keswalqw from the mountains on the far side of the continent, traded through many hands before it found hers. “To this hand,” she had told Henry when she first revealed the blade weeks ago, “it came to my hand, for which the Great Spirit made it. My sharp-toothed master of life and death.”