Sacrifices



  Sacrifices

  by A.M. Kirkby

  Text Copyright @ 2011 A.M. Kirkby

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events, and locations are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons or events, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.

  A ghost story of the Norfolk Broads

  Sword of Justice

  The Tin Heart

  Walsingham Way

  Doppelganger

  Green land

  and for children:

  Kasbah Cat

  Pagliaccio the Opera Cat

  Va-teh, the man is saying, va-teh, and it takes Karkana a while to work out what he wants.

  He fills the cup from the spring, and takes it over to the stranger, the only one in the long chained line of men to have spoken. The others are all silent, some asleep, except one at the end who keeps repeating a single word to himself, over and over.

  They are prisoners, he knows, or slaves. The two are often the same.

  "Take care of the cup," he says earnestly. "It's my favourite. Auntie made it."

  "Nice, is nice," the man says, obviously understanding the language better than he speaks it, from the care with which he holds the cup and drinks, a tiny sip at a time, with the delicacy of a cat.

  It is nice, Karkana knows; he'd seen his aunt make it, spinning the clay so thinly, thinner even than his mother could stretch out the dough for the crisp flaky pastries they always ate for Ghost Week. He'd been there when she took it out from the ashes of the kiln that had smoked three days, and blew gently to clear the shining black rind from its ashes. It had still been warm when he took it in his hands, a thing just born, and he had loved it instantly. Yes, it's nice.

  The man holds the cup out to him again, saying once more va-teh, va-teh? But this time more hesitant, or more polite, Karkana couldn't tell.

  He goes again to the spring, and hands the cup to the strange man, who might be Hellene, or Phokaian, he's not sure what the difference is. He sees the man has more reason than one to drink delicately; his lip is cracked, a faint trace of blood oozing from the split. The man's throat bulges and tightens as he swallows, with effort.

  One of the soldiers in charge of the chain gang shouts; the men at the front are already moving off, and the man in front of Karkana is stumbling to his feet, still holding the cup. He hasn't had a chance to finish his drink. His face is like a dead man's, sharp and grey, though Karkana realises he is not a ghost, but covered with the dust of the road; he holds the cup out to Karkana hurriedly.

  He can't drink it all, Karkana thinks, his throat is too dry. He'll need it; in southern Etruria the August sun can take your wits out of your head and fry them before it puts them back, so his father says. He shakes his head, pushes the cup gently back towards the stranger. "Take it", he says.

  So he watches the man stumble off, with all the other slaves and prisoners in the chain, one arm bent protectively to shelter the little cup.

  ***

  When Karkana gets home from the village that day, his father has come back; a father burnt brown by the sun, with a scar on one cheek that is still only half-healed, with a crust of bubbled blood and a pucker of new soft flesh round it, but still, recognisably father, and he runs into his father's arms, forgetting he's grown since his father went and jumping up into his arms though he's too heavy for his father to carry any more. His father forgets that too, and whirls round and round with him till the sky starts to tilt and unhinge.

  His father puts him down. The world still spins.

  He is shouting with excitement, laughing, staggering. He punches his father hard, hugs him, makes sure it is really his father and not a hinthial, a revenant, one of the things they don't talk about when he is in the room, though he's heard the stories from the other children in the village anyway.

  "Ouch," his father says, as Karkana finds a sore place. "Watch it. A Phokaian got me there with the butt of his spear."

  "Ouch," Karkana says. "What did you do then?"

  "Gutted him like a trout," says his father, grinning. "And ate him for supper."

  "Fibber."

  His father shrugs.

  "Your father doesn't know how to gut a trout," his mother says. She must have come into the room while Karkana was whirling about with his father; she has an amused but slightly pained smile on her face, the same smile she always has in the morning when his father has a hangover, which is not all that unusual.

  "I do too."

  "So why have I just had my arms up to the elbow in fish guts?"

  Trout for dinner, Karkana thinks happily, and wonders how his mother got the trout with no father here to fish, whether she'd asked the neighbours, or her sister for some; or did father bring the trout with him from the expedition, was that what a naval expedition meant? (And anyway, why were they fighting about trout? And at sea?) But never mind; father was here, and there would be trout for dinner as there always was when they had something to celebrate, the feast of the hidden gods or a birthday, or a good harvest from the vineyards.

  The trout is marvellous, flaking away from the bone fragrantly, stuffed with wild fennel where the guts would have been. Karkana thinks about the gutted Phokaian, imagining a fish in a helmet and breastplate; he laughs, and looks at his father, and suddenly thinks it might not be a good idea to tell him exactly what he's thinking about, so he says; "I'm glad you're back", and sees his father smile, till the puckering scar begins to stretch and pull and obviously hurts, so that he grimaces, which makes it worse, then covers the scar with his hand and closes his eyes for a moment.

  "Is it bad?" his mother asks.

  "Not as bad as being gutted like a trout," father says, and nearly laughs, but doesn't.

  As Karkana drifts towards sleep that night, he thinks; I gave my cup away, and so my father has come home. As if it's a reward for his kindly deed. Mother always tells him the lasas reward good deeds, though he doesn't think it was the lasas who brought his father back...

  He wakes up in the night, somehow knowing something is wrong. Then he realises he has put his hand out to the place where he always keeps his little wine cup, and it's not there. For a moment he panics, feels around, thinks; it's been stolen. Then he remembers that he gave it away.

  He hears his parents' voices. They are up late, and he feels lonely without the curves of his wine cup to rub with his caressing thumb, so he goes out to the atrium where he can see them sitting under the starlit heaven, in a small pool of lamplight.

  "We sent the prisoners up to the temple," his father is saying.

  "But there were hundreds of them! There's no water there, no food, what are you going to do with them all?"

  His father looks unhappy and says nothing.

  "It's miles out of town. They won't be worth selling when you've finished with them."

  "Look," his father says crossly, "it's the only place that was big enough to take them all. Safely."

  "Safe you call it," she says, and is about to say more when his father sees him standing there, and calls to him. His voice is warm, but his eyes shift to his wife, and whatever she was about to say, she is suddenly silent.