Sarum Page 5

  “It is better that I stay here and hunt with you,” he said; and although Hwll did not trust him, he had to acknowledge the sense of this arrangement.

  Two miles away, where the two western rivers met, Tep and his family set up their curious, ramshackle shelters by the river bank.

  In this way, the two families came to occupy Sarum, hunting the high ground and the valleys where game was abundant. Never again did Hwll have to face starvation as he had in the tundra, and although his journey south had been cut off, he had found his warm lands.

  So began a new community of hunters at the place where the rivers met. They were not entirely alone, however. Seven miles to the east two other families had a similar camp on a wooded slope above a stream; and beside a marsh ten miles to the west along the river where Tep had built his huts, a friendly group of three families had settled in marsh huts, raised above the water on long poles for protection. To the north, however, as far as Hwll could discover, the plateau was empty.

  In Britain at that time, this was still a dense population, for the entire island probably contained less than five thousand souls.

  Sarum proved to be a place of many wonders. The two families could find enough food in the nearby valleys all year round without needing to move their camps. There were abundant roe deer; there were wild horse, elk, and sometimes bison and reindeer on the cooler plateau above. Once or twice, a brown bear with its clumsy gait even appeared; and while there were wolves in the forests too, they usually avoided the humans if they could. On the river there were swans, and at the harbour storks, pelicans and herons, though the last were not good to eat; there were many birds, including the tasty grey partridge and delicate lapwing. There were beavers, foxes, badgers; and sometimes all the families in the area came together to hunt the dangerous wild boar, with his villainous flashing tusks and his delicious meat. On the slopes Akun could find juniper, blackthorn and hawthorn berries; in the rivers Tep caught trout, salmon, pike, perch, grayling and eels. The hunters had a varied diet.

  Many animals however were as yet missing from the scene: there were of course no house mice, although field mice could be found in the woods. There were no rats; there were no sheep, no domestic pigs or cattle, no pheasant and, though hares existed, there were no rabbits, nor would there be until the Normans introduced them six and a half thousand years later.

  There was timber of many kinds: oak, ash, elder, pine; there was clay; and embedded in the chalk everywhere were deposits of flint useful for making arrowheads. In one place in particular, on the high ground a few miles to the east of the valley, there was a hollow in the ground which led to a small, natural open flint mine; and when he and Tep dug down a few feet, they found wonderful stone that they could easily quarry.

  He and Akun did not entirely abandon the way of life they had known in the open tundra. Neither of them cared for the stuffy hut in which Tep lived all the year round. In winter they cut a large square hole well into the hillside and faced its entrance with brushwood and reeds, to keep in the heat; but when spring came, they erected their tent on the warm slopes overlooking the valley, and raised the flaps so that the breeze could ventilate their home with the sweet smell of spring leaves and summer grasses.

  The winters were still long and hard, and the east wind could whip up a blizzard on the high ground quite as terrible as any they had known in the north; but when spring came, it was a warm, tumultuous affair unlike the meagre season they had known before: the clear streams from the melting snow coursed down from the high ground into the valleys, and below their hill, the little river would suddenly swell into a roaring spate and the long green riverweeds, which normally drifted listlessly in the current, would be stretched almost horizontal by the weight of waters pressing south and carrying with them a heavy rich sediment of chalk and mud.

  But because he had come from the open tundra, it was above all on the bleak, silent high ground that Hwll liked to wander. In summer on a cloudless day, it often felt as though he could reach out and touch the sky; and when winter came and a biting east wind whipped the snow from the tops of the trees, the place reminded him still more of the vast, implacable emptiness of the tundra he had once loved.

  It was, however, the midsummer of the year after their arrival that he discovered one of the greatest beauties of the area. He and Akun had wandered alone on to the high ground one sunny afternoon, and some miles north, they had come across a huge clearing. It had been made on a gently sloping hillside some thirty years before by a band of hunters who had camped there for several years and cut down all the surrounding trees. Cowslips grew there, and the delicate horseshoe vetch; but what puzzled Hwll was that the ground seemed to have a strange, blue colour, unlike anything he had ever seen before. What could it be? It was Akun who solved the problem. Laughing, she ran forward into the clearing, clapping her hands. As she did so, the blue field dissolved before his eyes, and upwards of a hundred thousand blue butterflies, startled, rose into the air and almost blinded him with their crazy flutterings of wings. These were the adonis blues and the chalkhill blues that made any empty spaces on the plain their special home. As he watched Akun in this cloud of blue wings, Hwll felt his heart once again leap for joy. Rushing to her, he pulled her to the ground and they made passionate love in the field.

  For three years the families lived together in peace, and Hwll’s broad, craggy face creased into ever deeper lines of contentment as he watched his family grow. The boy, Otter, grew into a strong, stocky little fellow, bright and capable; he and Tep’s children took to hunting along the valleys in a pack and soon Otter had proved himself as adept as any of them in trapping the small animals they hunted. As for Vata, the little girl, she had Akun’s magnificent hazel eyes from birth and by the time she was eight she was so strikingly like her mother that it sometimes made Hwll burst out laughing; he delighted in her company and he was only sorry that he had promised her to Tep’s boy, who showed every sign of being as hard and untrustworthy as his father. But the promise had been made and it seemed he could do nothing about it. Despite this one regret, his joy seemed almost complete when, early in the second year of their new life he saw that Akun was going to have another child: and that summer she gave birth to a second fine son. It seemed then to the hunter that the goddess of the moon, to whom he sacrificed an animal every year, had blessed him and his family indeed.

  As for Tep, he was glad no longer to be an outcast. He and Hwll often hunted together, and sometimes he would disappear down river in his dugout and return a few days later with pelican meat or some other delicacy from the lake, or with the bright plumage of one of the lake birds that Ulla, smiling for once, would weave into one of her baskets. Ulla’s own life changed little. Sometimes she would appear with a black eye or some other mark of the beatings Tep gave her from time to time; but she rarely complained about the life of drudgery she led.

  It was not until the fourth year of the new settlement, in the summer, that an event took place which nearly destroyed both families.

  The preceding winter had been exceptionally long and hard and in the middle of it, Ulla had fallen sick. Though she was still only twenty, the intense cold and her hard life took their toll, and it seemed that she would die. Tep and his children tended her, in their careless way, but soon she had descended into a sickly silence and she showed no sign of recovery. After a few days, it was left to Akun to sit with her in the small hut in which Tep left her alone, to keep a fire alight for her and to feed her the warm broth which was the only food she could swallow. Her already meagre body was wasted; some days she shivered uncontrollably and Akun could only shake her head when Hwll asked about her condition. When, at midwinter, a huge blizzard blew into the valley for three successive days so that Akun could not make even the two mile journey from the hill camp to the hut by the river, she assumed that Ulla had died. But somehow she had not. The frail life force that had given her the passive resistance to survive with Tep and his family now enabled her to survive
the cruel cold, and after the blizzard she very slowly began to mend.

  It was because of her care for Ulla that a new, if somewhat unwelcome, friendship developed between Tep and Akun. One day in early spring she was surprised when the hunched form of the little hunter arrived at the hill camp bearing a large fish which he solemnly handed to her.

  “For you,” he explained. “You looked after Ulla.”

  She accepted this gift of gratitude with a friendly smile and, as custom demanded, offered him a place at the little fire and gave him food in return.

  A few days later, he appeared again, this time with another fish and a hare. Akun was not sure she should accept more gifts from him; but since she did not want to offend him, she took them and once again thanked him with a smile.

  Since then, Tep had on a number of occasions continued apparently chance meetings with her, either near the hill camp or in the valley below, and since she spent time with Ulla, who depended on her for company, it was impossible to avoid the foxy-faced hunter. She fell gradually into a polite familiarity with him which seemed to please him, and he continued to give her presents of food from time to time. When she once or twice asked Hwll if she should accept them, he only shrugged and said:

  “Tep hunts with me; it is better he should be our friend.”

  And so she did not bring the matter up again.

  It was one morning in late summer, when Hwll had gone tracking deer with Otter, that she left her baby at the camp with Vata and went down into the valley. In the woods east of the valley entrance there were berries and she knew that by now they would be ripe. As she made her way to the spot, she had the feeling that she was being followed, but though she stopped a number of times, she was unable to see anyone. The place she selected to pick the berries was a small clearing where blackberry bushes abounded, and she had already filled one of the two pouches she had brought with her when, quite suddenly, she realised that Tep was in the clearing with her. He had crept up on her stealthily and now he stood at her side. She could see that he had bathed in the river that morning so that his normally dirty body and straggly beard were less evil-smelling than usual. His shock of grizzled carrot hair stood up briskly from his head.

  Although he had surprised her, she greeted him calmly as usual, but there was something in his manner that alarmed her, and as she continued to move along the line of the bush, she found that he was moving beside her. He said nothing. She was not sure what she should do. Then, as she reached out to a high cluster of berries, the sly little fellow slid his hand quickly forward and firmly took her breast.

  She froze. Although she was somewhat taller and heavier than the wiry hunter, she feared his strength.

  While her body was motionless, her mind was working fast: she realised at once the enormous danger of the situation. For Tep to attempt to steal another hunter’s woman was to risk a fight, probably to the death, and unless Tep had already planned to kill Hwll, which was unlikely, she could not believe that he was deliberately provoking such a crisis. So he must think that she would welcome these illicit advances. Immediately her mind ran over their recent meetings. She had smiled at him, accepted his gifts, not just once, but several times; she had made him welcome when he visited their camp and she had fallen into the habit of easy familiarity with him in Ulla’s presence. Clearly he had mistaken these tokens of friendship for signs that she would encourage him, and now he had taken the first positive step. She must act fast, before it was too late.

  So she turned, keeping her face impassive, and taking his hand gently but firmly by the wrist, she removed it from her breast, shaking her head gravely at the same time. She did not speak because she did not trust herself to find the right words. She hoped this action would be enough.

  It was not. Tep had brooded about the full-bodied woman on the hill for many long months, and Ulla’s bouts of sickness had increased his hunger and restlessness; cautious and calculating though he was, he had for some time persuaded himself that Akun’s friendly attitude was meant to encourage him, and he was in no mood to be denied. At this first sign of rejection his face registered disbelief, then his eyes narrowed to slits. Slowly he reached out with his hand again.

  Now Akun made her great mistake. Instead of remaining calm, she panicked. She struck his hand away with a gesture of disgust and then, contemptuously, she spat into his face.

  Even as she did so, she realised the terrible error she had made. His face contorted into a spasm of hurt and rage; his eyes hardened into angry lust; and before she knew what had happened, he had ducked under her arm, seized her round the waist and with an ease that was terrifying, thrown her to the ground. Then, with a single, vicious movement, he ripped the shirt of leather off her shoulder and tore it down over her breasts. They were still magnificent, full and heavy; his lips curled into a snarl of lust.

  She hit out wildly, no longer thinking of anything but escape. Swinging her fist with all her force at his face, she caught him on the side of the head and sent him sprawling; but only for a moment: before she could get up he had pulled out his long, bone hunting knife and with a cry of rage he threw himself upon her. This time she felt the sinewy strength of his arms as they pinioned her, his hard little face pressed against hers, and the knife held tight against her throat; and she knew that there was nothing she could do.

  If she were to have any hope of getting away from him, Akun knew that she must make him relax; and so, deliberately, she let her body go limp. Then, hiding her anger, she ran her hands down his hunched little form, just as she would have done had it been Hwll; she raised one knee, seeming to invite him. Slowly she felt him loosen his grip on her, but still cautiously. She waited. He raised his face and she forced herself to smile at him. He was deceived. With a sudden grin of satisfaction he pushed her legs apart and thrust at her, and still, as he entered her, she seemed to encourage him. His face creased with a look of triumph; and he released the knife.

  Before even his quick wits could anticipate her, she had it in her hand. She slashed upwards at his face with all her force. There was a scream of anguish, as he threw himself back away from her and his hand clapped to his face. She had sliced open his right eye.

  Akun did not stop. As he rolled in agony on the ground, she ran through the wood, still holding his knife in one hand and pulling her clothes around her with the other. She did not stop until she reached the camp on the hill; and there, until Hwll returned, she stood on guard with one of Hwll’s bows and a quiver of arrows, in case Tep should think of following her.

  As events turned out, she need not have done so.

  It was late afternoon when Hwll returned. Still trembling with rage and fear she told him what had occurred.

  “You must kill him,” she said, “or I am sure he will try to kill us both.”

  Hwll’s face darkened with rage, and his first impulse was to do exactly as she suggested. But after a moment he became thoughtful.

  It was a simple if unspoken rule of life amongst the hunters in those deserted regions that strife between families must at all costs be avoided. The population was tiny: life was precious; mates must be found each generation. If he killed Tep and started a feud with his family, then Tep’s sons, when they were full grown, would seek revenge. In a few years, both families could be destroyed. He shook his head: that was not the way. It was this simple instinct for preservation that had kept the peace in many of the hunting communities in those empty spaces.

  “I will consider what must be done,” he said. And all that night he sat alone in front of their tent, pondering this difficult problem.

  By dawn it was clear to him that there was only one possible solution; early that morning he took both his spear and his bow, and moved softly through the woods towards Tep’s camp. He moved cautiously. Tep would expect reprisals; he might be in hiding; he might try to ambush him. He made a circle round the camp by the river before closing in.

  As he expected, the huts were deserted, although Tep’s dugout was st
ill resting on the riverbank nearby.

  Carefully choosing a position where he could not be surprised from behind, he placed his spear beside him and sat down to wait, Laying his bow across his legs. He had the feeling that Tep was nearby and probably watching him, but there was no sign of him. The morning passed; the sun reached its high point and slowly began to descend, but still there was no movement except that of the swans drifting by on the river, and no sound but that of the birds and the soft breeze rustling in the trees. Hwll waited, knowing that his patience would be rewarded.

  It was mid-afternoon when Tep appeared. He came slowly forward from a clump of trees opposite, moving haltingly, as though he did not trust himself, and as he drew closer Hwll saw the reason for his shaky gait: his right eye was nothing but a mass of pulp around which the blood had hardened; he would never see with it again.

  Silently the two men faced each other, both watching cautiously in case the other attacked. Then Hwll spoke.

  “You must leave here,” he said simply. “Go back to your camp down river.”

  It was the only solution and both men knew it.

  Tep considered.

  “My boy, your girl,” he ventured.

  “No.” Hwll shook his head. He did not feel bound to honour his promise to give little Vata to Tep’s son any more; and he was not sorry for the excuse to end this rather unsatisfactory arrangement. For some time he had considered a boy from the camp of hunters to the east – a cheerful, lively boy like his own son who had appeared with his father the last time there had been a gathering of men to hunt boar.

  Tep said nothing for a moment. He could not argue with Hwll’s decision; but it was the second time that he had been cast out of a community and he knew that the prospects for his son now of finding a woman were bleak. There was still something else on his mind however.

  “When the bison came over the high ground,” he began, “my sons . . .”