Chapter 6 #5
The woman on the peninsula, who is in fact a distant descendant of the teller, turns, unaware of what her country has just avoided, looks up into the sky and, seeing the position of the sun, nearly at its apex, calls to the man, gesturing upwards.
The language she speaks is nothing like the one Brith and her mother used all that time ago, nothing like the one spoken by the general with the rudimentary map, but what she says could have only one possible meaning: Hurry up.
He regards his woman as she continues up the hill, her narrow back, her long switch of hair, and he sighs.
He doesn’t hold with what they are doing, doesn’t believe it will bring her what she wants, but he has agreed to put aside his work, not to go out into the shallows of the sea in search of shellfish, and instead come with her on this mission.
Why? Because he loves her, because what she wants, he wants, although he will not admit it.
He does, he thinks, as he watches his feet searching for footholds in the damp, grassy ground, desire what she pines for.
He would like a child, as she would; he would like a baby to lie between them in their hut; he would like to return in the evening to a woman and a child (he will not allow himself to think, children, no, that would be asking too much, just one would be enough, please).
In their lifetimes, which by modern standards are short and troubled, but by theirs are long and fortunate, they have seen great change upon the peninsula.
Holy men with shaven pates have come over land from the east and built themselves a large stone dwelling place down by the marsh, where they keep bees and gather the moist green marsh plants and sing together, and sometimes the sound of their song floats out over the roofs of the huts, and the man, and his woman, and their people listen and wonder.
And other men have come from the sea, and these men are not shaven-headed or holy, far from it, they have huge straggling beards, and possess great height, like giants they are, and they have broken down the doors of the monastery, and carried off some of the treasures and, yes, killed some of the holy men, staving in their skulls with cudgels.
When these giants come, the people in the huts run—they seize up their tools and their children (if they have them) and what food they can carry and they sprint deftly away, melting unseen into the woods and the clefts in the hills, and there they stay, watching and waiting, until the giant men have got back into their boats and sailed away.
The huts are sometimes burned by the giants, sometimes only pillaged, and then they set to, repairing the roofs, straightening the chaos, instructing the older children to keep watch by the shore for the giants’ boats, with their many oars and their carved heads of terror.
Perhaps they will come again, perhaps not.
Nobody knows. After the last time, which was the worst, the man, his woman, and their people went to the broken door of the holy stone place and offered help: there had been seven holy men and now there were only two, and scared they were, and injured, and not enough to make good their house.
So they helped them, and his woman had tended the holy men’s wounds, for she has the skill and the knowledge for this, and afterwards they placed their hands on her forehead, making a cross upon her brow, and spoke in words that were strange, and later that night, after he and his woman had lain together in their hut, she said: Perhaps that will help.
What? he’d said, although he had known and it gave him a heavy feeling in his heart’s core.
The holy men’s words, she said. The man had turned over and spat into their fire, which fizzled and protested.
Better you’d visit the old wellspring up on the hill, he’d muttered, without thinking about it, because hadn’t his mother and his grandfather said there was a place of water at the base of the mountain that was sacred and inhabited by spirits, and would give whatever was asked of it or whatever it was you were in need of, one of the two, if you paid it respect and then you drank deeply from it?
He’d been taken there as a child, when he fell from a tree and injured his shoulder: a strange and eerie place it was, encircled by trees, its rocky banks strewn with a clutter of objects.
Seashells, he had seen, as his grandfather dipped him into the icy waters, immersing his aching and mangled shoulder, making him cry out with shock, clay pots, a brooch, several bone hairpins, cups, plates.
When he asked his grandfather what all these things were for, why were they left there, his grandfather, long dead now, of course, told him that people left them as offerings or gifts for the pool and the wise and ancient spirit said to reside within.
His woman, of course, could think of nothing else.
So here they are, climbing the slope, an amber amulet gripped in her hand which she will drop into the spring as an offering, and it is all his fault, or is it the fault of the holy men, with their strange double-tongue speak, or perhaps even the marauding giants in their curving ships? Where can he lay the blame?
He watches as his woman disappears into the woods, picking her way carefully through the trees, and he leans on his stick, waiting.
He will not go in with her: they have agreed this.
Better she goes alone. He sees the hill rise away from him in one direction and in front of him the roughened face of the mountain.
He sees that the earth here is grooved with tiny streamlets, many of them, all coming out of the woods, and a flattened network of otter-runs.
He sees, further off, a flat piece of land, slightly raised, around which the streams curve: a large and upright old prayer stone stands there, alone and dignified. He moves towards it.
Wild irises grow in a knot at one end of the flat ground, their knife-like leaves spearing up from the grass, their complex yellow petals opening to the sun.
The man walks to the stone, places his hand upon its rough face, the dog at his heels.
He taps the earth with his stick, turns one way, then the other: mountain behind, hill to one side, hill to the other.
Bathed in sunlight, sheltered from wind.
He lifts his face and sniffs the air: peat, grass, moisture, clover.
The dog, meanwhile, is having a very different experience.
First, the woman has gone off on her own into the trees and this feels extremely wrong and the dog doesn’t understand why the man isn’t more concerned about this.
And then there are cross-currents of confusing smells in this place: a hint of smoke, then a whiff of humans the dog doesn’t know, followed by the thinnest scent of dug earth, and something else, which alarms and excites it—bones.
It turns, first one way, then the other, so fast that it can see the confounding, vanishing whip of its own tail.
It growls, then yaps, a deep and throaty noise, and snaps its teeth at the air near the stone.
Hush, the man says absently, and the dog is incensed by its owner’s inability to see that this place, this patch of ground, is an unquiet one, that they are not alone here. It barks again, more insistently, staring intently at the man, trying to communicate its unease.
But the man frowns. Lie down, he orders.
The dog paces one way, then the other, anguished.
It wants to obey, it really does, but how can it?
There is to be no lying down here, no resting, not on this soil, which seethes with disquieting scents, and not in this air, which roils with something the dog cannot name.
Bad things have happened in this place, the dog knows, and worse is to come.
A short whistle from between the man’s teeth, and the dog drops to its belly.
It fidgets and frets, turning to scratch its flank, then gnaw at the fur on its paws.
From out of the woods it sees or seems to see, just for a moment, not the woman but the smirred form of a stranger, carrying the dead body of a dog that looks distressingly like itself.
This place, the man is thinking, will get the first rays of the morning sun. It is entirely hidden from the rest of the valley, from the holy house, from the cliffs, from the shore, from the huts. It cannot be seen. They might be safe here, he and his woman, and perhaps their—
He turns. Why is the dog yelping and carrying on? The animal is writhing on its stomach, making a high-pitched noise of upset.
What ails you? the man says crossly, but he waves his hand. Away you go, then.
The dog, released, springs up, an arrow from a bow, and sprints away, settling further down the slope, away from the flat ground. Ears flat, hackles up, watching over its people closely from a distance.
And then the woman emerges from the trees, and she is smiling, her face and tunic are wet, and her hands are empty, and she smells of herself and also clean water, and the man goes towards her and they embrace briefly, and the dog is mollified.
It shifts sideways on its great paws, filled inexplicably with the feeling that all is well in its world once more.
Despite the dog’s misgivings, the man, with the help of others, builds a new hut, sheltered by the standing stone, on the flat patch of high land.
He moves his belongings and tools; the woman, pregnant now, brings the hides and pots and utensils.
They live there, near the sacred spring, for many years, bringing up their son, and when they die, the son finds a wife to join him there and they bring up their children.