Sarum Page 7

  Only once, as the new family of Hwll grew up, did Ulla attempt to challenge her authority, by rashly giving her own daughter an order contradicting Akun’s instructions. She had done it in front of the whole family, including Hwll. For a second, Akun looked at her with contempt, then gave her a blow that sent her flying off the edge of the lip and rolling thirty feet down the slope over gnarled roots and thorny bushes. No one said anything. Bruised and bleeding, Ulla looked up once, with rage in her eye, at the powerful stocky form above her, then reverted at once to her usual submissiveness. She did not cross Akun again and the camp lived in peace.

  The future of the valley seemed assured. The little tribe which Hwll and Tep had fathered hunted the area with skill and success.

  Because of Hwll’s protection, even Tep’s sons were able to find brides in the region. He saw his own son now lead the hunt. Soon another generation would take over, and Hwll was content.

  Yet he was not content. At first he could not say why. He and Akun, both in their thirties and approaching old age, could look back upon great achievements: he had led his family on their epic journey from the tundra; he had found the warm lands. They had hunted well and raised fine families. Both of them were now treated with honour and respect – surely he had done all that it was possible to do.

  But with each passing season, the feeling of unease and disquiet grew stronger within the old hunter: it was a deep sense that his work was not complete, that something of vital importance was still missing from the life of the place where the five rivers met. It distressed him and it would not leave him.

  He took to visiting the high ground alone, withdrawing somewhat from the life of the camp, even from Akun herself, whom he loved. He would spend days up there. Sometimes he would make a small sacrifice to the moon goddess who had watched over him so faithfully; at other times he would find a high spot from which there was an uninterrupted view in every direction and he would gaze for long hours over the empty landscape of wooded ridges which reminded him of the bleak spaces of the tundra. It was the huge elemental forces – the open sky, one day azure blue, the next grey, lowering and savage, the ridges that swept endlessly to the horizon like a sea, the whistling breezes and the great silences – it was these things which both frightened him and comforted him as well.

  At such times Hwll would remember his father and the many things which he had told him about the world and about the gods who directed the huge forces of nature; he would remember the directions that had been handed down to him and which, despite the fact that they had proved inaccurate, had nonetheless brought him south on his epic journey. He thought of the terrible things he had witnessed on that journey, and the meaning of it all. The contemplation of these things moved him profoundly.

  And to the gods he would whisper:

  “Show me what it is that I have failed to do, what further act I must perform.”

  And one day, as the wind hissed over the trees, he heard it give him his answer:

  “You must tell it, Hwll. You must tell the story of your journey, and of your ancestors, and of the gods, so that these things will be remembered and not be lost.”

  He heard it distinctly; there was no mistaking the whispering voice. But still he was troubled.

  “How shall I tell these things?” he cried out loud.

  Then the voice of the gods – for this was surely what the whisper must be – replied:

  “Listen.”

  It was evening when Hwll came down to the camp; and his family never forgot his look when he approached them: for his wrinkled face was suffused with a radiance they had never seen before, and his eyes had a faraway stare.

  Whatever it was that Hwll had heard from the gods, it was not to be told just yet. For only a few days after he came down from the high ground, the long winter began.

  It seemed to be endless that year; at times the old hunter wondered: did I come so far, only for this? The cold was bitter, as bad as he had ever known in the tundra. The river was frozen over so hard that it took the men most of the day to break through a hole through which they could fish in the water beneath. In the valley, a great silence had fallen, and for days on end only a few birds appeared to move. Soon they were dying, and the silence grew deeper. On the high ground above, there was no movement and no sound either, except for the steady, persistent hiss of the north east wind, day after day, bringing snow like a wet haze, snow that drifted quietly into piles so deep that when he looked out now, Hwll could not even see the trees.

  Thanks to Akun and the women, they had plentiful stores. Fish could still be caught; sometimes there was a little game. Hwll consoled himself with the thought: this will never be like the land we travelled from. When spring comes, there will be game again.

  Only one thing grieved him: Akun.

  She had known for some time that soon a winter would come which must be her last. At first there were only small signs – a slight stiffness in the joints, a tooth unexpectedly loosening, or cracking on a bone. Twice recently she had lost a tooth, felt it suddenly under her tongue, tasted the blood. On each occasion, she had stuffed grass into the gap and hoped that Hwll had not noticed. She did not want to admit what was taking place.

  But this winter, something worse was happening to her.

  It was not just her joints: they might ache in the cold, damp winter, but the spring sun had always seemed to make them better. No, this was something of a different nature, something less easy to define: it was an inner coldness, that often made her shiver when she was alone, and which obstinately refused to leave her, even when she was huddled close to the fire or slept, wrapped in furs, beside the warm body of old Hwll. Her body was growing gaunt; she looked sadly at the now flaccid wrinkled shapes that had once been her splendid breasts. Several times, when there was no one to see, and the terrible cold from the snow came insistently into the shelter in the long hours when Hwll had gone out onto the ridge, she found frozen tears on her cheek. The winter seemed endless.

  But it was not even this coldness within that told her what was to come. It was when she awoke, one day in the depth of that long winter and realised that she did not care any more. Then, without regret she knew: this winter will be my last.

  The spring was very late that year, but when it came, it came with a huge rushing of waters; the sun broke through, warm and strong; the whole valley burst into violent life and the river was, once again, a torrent. Hwll, grey-haired, thinner than before, but still in his old age a useful hunter, led her each day to her accustomed place on the little lip of ground overlooking the valley; but it no longer pleased her. She retired to the shelter each day when he was gone; and even in the summer, she could only be persuaded out for a little time.

  He said nothing, but he understood, and it grieved him to know that he was soon to lose her.

  It was one night that summer, when the whole extended family sat round the fire they had built on the side of the little hill above the valley entrance, and after they had eaten the sweet-smelling meat of the deer, and gorged themselves with the berries that were so abundant, Hwll ordered silence: and then, with words that had been given him by the wind itself, he completed his life’s work by passing on to them the great treasure of his knowledge.

  That night, and many more times, in words that they could memorise easily, so that the past would be preserved when he had died, he told them all he knew: he told them about the wall of ice and the tundra in the north, about the great seas to the west and south, and about the mountains and forests far away in the east. He told them about the gods and about the great causeway across the sea. And then, he told them the story he had heard in the wind, of how the sea had cut them off.

  “In the beginning,” he explained, “there were two great gods: the sun, and the moon his wife, who watches over all hunters. And they had two children: the god of the forest, and the god of the sea. And the god of the forest lived in the great forest to the east that was full of game; and the god of the sea lived in
the north, near the great wall of ice.

  “The sun and the moon loved the forest god, and gave him much land. But he was never satisfied and always asked for more. This made the sea god angry, for he was given no land.

  “A year passed, and still the forest god asked for land. And the sea god was more angry still.

  “The next year, the forest god asked for more land, saying: ‘My mother the moon likes men to hunt; give us more land for forest, so that they may do so.’

  “Now the water god was angry; and he went to his father the sun and said: ‘Father punish my brother who is never satisfied.’

  “And so the sun god became a huge white swan, he flew over the ice in the north, again and again, and the ice melted.

  “When the ice melted, there arose a sea; and the sea came down from the north in a huge wave and it swept over all the land there and it covered the forest to the east. And the waters remained.”

  Then, carried away by the memory of the terrible sight he had seen, and moved to the depths by the thought of the vanished forest, the hunter’s voice rose to a chant.

  “So the forest lay under the sea, and the animals too, the birds and the beasts, they are all there still, under the dark waters.

  “You can hear their cries in the waves.

  “The path to the east is lost, and we are an island, cut off from the rest of the land.

  “The waters are rising still; each year they rise, taking more land.

  “They will take the shore, they will take the lake, they will take the valley.

  “But the high ground will remain, for the waters cannot reach it.

  “Here, my children, we are safe, until the world ends.

  “Give sacrifice to the gods. Salah.”

  His song was ended. The listeners who heard these sobering words, and knowing they came to him from the gods, remained silent for some time.

  When Hwll died, three years after Akun, they buried him beside her on the high ground. With him they buried the little stone figure that he had made of her.

  And for many generations, at Sarum, it was the time of the hunter.

  THE BARROW

  Approximately three thousand five hundred years passed, and in the remote northern island of Britain, as far as we can tell, very little happened. To the north, the ice cap retreated to something like its present arctic position, and the sea continued to rise and devour new land, so that the inland lake by the hill became instead a protected harbour, most of the land between the hill and the old chalk cliffs having been washed away. The temperature too had continued to rise, so that in the northern part of the island, the tundra departed, and cool forests took its place. The reindeer, the bison and the elk gradually disappeared from the land.

  But in the place where the five rivers met, the descendants of Tep and Hwll, and others like them, continued to hunt undisturbed, and if a few adventurous folk succeeded in crossing the Channel to the island from time to time, they too followed the ancient hunting ways of the region during this long period.

  But elsewhere, the story was very different, for some time before 5,000 B.C., the greatest revolution that the western world has ever known took place. It started in the Middle East and from there it spread over most of Europe: this revolution was the introduction of farming.

  It changed everything. It was the beginning of the modern world. Following game, a single family even in a region like Sarum had needed many miles of land over which to roam in search of food; but for sowing crops and raising livestock, a few dozens of acres was enough and food could be stored. It was the beginning of wealth as it has been known ever since. Whereas up to this point in history, man had been only a figure in the landscape, now he began to dominate the land, controlling it and shaping it to his own purpose.

  By four thousand years before the birth of Christ, these epoch-making changes had produced extraordinary results.

  In the warm and fertile lands between the great rivers Tigris and Euphrates in present day Iran, an inventive and busy people – the Sumerians – were building the world’s first hill towns. They were made of mud and brick and their summits were crowned with temples. Elsewhere in the Middle East, other peoples were developing new and sophisticated crafts: in Egypt they made linen; in Mesopotamia, clever jewellers were combining copper brought down from the mountains with glass, in beautiful and intricate patterns to make the ornamental work called faience. On the coast of Saudi Arabia, divers searched the oyster beds for pearls which they exported, and in the Levant, merchants were putting out to sea in small ships rigged with square leather sails, carrying cargoes of copper, ivory and brightly painted pottery.

  Further north, in Europe, there were no towns. But in that huge belt of land stretching from the Danube to the Baltic, farmers were planting crops, raising livestock, and burning the stubble to enrich the soil; and they were building huge wooden barns and houses, sometimes a hundred feet long. Further west, in Brittany on the northern coast of France, the farmers were learning to decorate their stonework and pottery with elaborate patterns of spirals, arcs and circles that seemed to have no end.

  The Neolithic Age of farmers and builders in stone was well under way, and the age of the new metal alloy, bronze, would soon begin.

  But not in Britain.

  For in Britain, cut off by the sea from these developments, it was still the time of the hunter.

  One summer morning, about four thousand years before Christ, a party of six small boats entered the shallow harbour by the hill and turned up the slow moving river that led towards Sarum.

  The boats were made of brightly painted skins stretched over a wooden framework; they were each about fifteen feet long, broad, with a fairly shallow draught, and they had been paddled across the English Channel at great risk from the coast of Brittany. They had no sails and were really designed for river work, but luckily the weather during their crossing had been unusually calm.

  There were twenty fighting men in the boats, together with their women and children; both men and women wielded the paddles and they wore simple sleeveless jerkins made of leather or woven wool which left their arms conveniently bare for this hard work. The boats also contained four dogs, eight lambs, twelve small calves, ten piglets and a quantity of supplies, including the all important clay pots that contained seeds for sowing. The fleeces of the lambs were coloured a rich golden brown.

  There were two figures of particular note in the party. In the stern of the last boat sat a massive man. He did not paddle or take any active part in the proceedings, but sat very still as though conscious that he was a precious object to be taken reverently from place to place. He was middle-aged and of only middle height: his massiveness derived from his gigantic girth and weight. His head was round and bald. He had oiled both body and head so that the latter now caught the sun and shone. His watery eyes were set wide apart and were never still; he wheezed continually. This was the medicine man, and his presence would ensure that the greatest of all the gods, the sun god, looked upon the enterprise with favour.

  The other, and still more striking figure was that of the leader of the band, a big thick-set bull of a man with a black beard, a huge nose that jutted out from his face like some rugged promontory, and small, angry eyes. As the boats moved swiftly across the shallow waters he stood in the prow of the foremost, directing operations. At his feet lay an enormous black club. His fierce eyes scanned the banks for signs of any enemy, but he saw that the place was deserted.

  He was wrong. On the northern edge of the harbour, concealed behind a bank of reeds, a single hunter had been watching the six boats intently ever since they had first appeared in the narrow entrance that led to the sea. He was a small, wiry man; his shock of bristling black hair and his narrow face gave him the look of some small, stoat-like animal; he also had long prehensile toes, a characteristic he shared with a number of hunters in the area. He was sitting in a simple dugout – well suited to those calm waters, but slow and primitive compared with the
six long boats that had just glided by. As soon as they had passed, he abandoned it and, using the track the hunters knew, loped quickly inland through the woods. In this way, he was able to head off the boats as they made their way upstream; he did not pause, however, but continued on his way.

  The leader of the new arrivals was a remarkable figure and, along the coast from which he came, already a legend in his own lifetime. They called him Krona the Warrior.

  He had started life as a simple farmer, undistinguished from the other modest smallholders who lived in the region. He would certainly have remained just that – an even-tempered fellow with a healthy young family – had it not been for one of those sudden tragedies which can jolt a man’s, or a community’s life, into some wholly different course.

  In Krona’s case, it was the invasion of a marauding tribe which changed everything. They arrived suddenly and without warning in that coastal region early one summer; no one knew exactly where they had come from, nor what impetus had driven them to travel; but they seemed to have arrived from the east. It was a pattern that was to be repeated for thousands of years in the troubled history of Europe. Again and again such invaders – sometimes a party of raiders, sometimes an entire people – would come sweeping into Western Europe with terrifying force; they came from Scandinavia, from the Germanic plans, from the distant steppes of central Asia; some stayed and settled, others came, ravaged and departed.

  The marauders who came to devastate Krona’s region were a comparatively insignificant group, a nameless but brutal tribe of tall and swarthy people who camped in huge leather tents, and whose only interest was in hunting, stealing and destroying. They had made their base about a hundred miles to the north east and each spring they had swept along the coast in war parties, burning the isolated farms and settlements who were ill-equipped to resist these surprise attacks. One day, when Krona had been away on a visit further along the coast, they had swooped down upon his area, and when he returned it was to find his farm burned, his wife and four children all dead, and his livestock taken. When he saw this, he vowed: