As the gap into the Bull Temple closed, so the cowled man glanced back, and though I couldn’t at that time be certain, I thought I recognized a face from my youth, a face I had missed for years, the face of the man who dowsed for the hidden cities of the world.
Finebeard was watching me, I realized, staring out from the midst of the flames.
Fire suddenly exploded as bitumen or tar ignited and he pulled quickly back as heavy black smoke roiled down the steps, acrid and choking.
The fire raged for an hour and the great gates were consumed. When the flames had finally died down, the whole piazza was covered with a dark ash, the air heavy with burning. Around the open gate, the two bulls were now leaning heavily towards the forest, their heads turned, the shadows from their horns making pointers on the ground, indicating a direction I should take.
Intrigued, less fearful now, I entered the Bull Temple and walked along the vast hall, aware that an encompassing darkness lay ahead. The walls were intricately inscribed with figures, painted with murals, covered with design, none of it at all meaningful. The hall seemed to swallow me and when I shouted, the voice echoed and echoed, each sound becoming fainter, but never actually dying.
I went outside again to the piazza, looked up at the gaping muzzles of the aurochs, and decided to follow their advice.
I returned quickly to the cathedral, thought of my meagre supplies, and swiftly caught two chickens, trussing them wing and beak and tying them, alive, to my pack, where they hung silent and in peril until their later, swift dispatch.
As I made to leave the Hinterland, I looked again at the fragment of wooden painting given to me by the fair-bearded youth, and this time turned it over in my fingers.
A crude green face had been scratched on the other side. Open eyes watched me.
I was still studying this enigmatic fragment when a shadow fell across the entrance to the church and the youth himself appeared there. He carried his own leather pack, the sturdy lance and a cluster of knives, dangling from his belt. He was smiling at me, then beckoned, pointing towards the forest and the waterfall.
‘Yes. I’d already decided to go.’
He left the church and I followed him. He was singing loudly as he strode towards the evening woods, then glanced back and laughed, again beckoning to me.
Catch up! Come on! A long way to go …
19
I have no idea how many deep channels led away from the Hinterland, but that Greenface’s return route to her own country would have been through the waterfall should have been obvious. When she and her Greyfaced companion had passed through me, that night, I had glimpsed the fall and the gorge in the background and been aware that they had come from that same direction. Now, I found traces of her in a rocky overhang, close to the raging water but in a place sheltered from its spray. I know they were the remains of her camp – she had cut her hair as I had seen her doing on two previous occasions. The dry black locks were scattered in the ashes of a small fire.
A path of sorts led down the side of the gorge, levelling out to a narrow ledge that passed behind the falling water. I could hardly believe that the carts of the icon hunters had come this way, but the marks of the inner wheels were clear on the slope and where the ledge was narrowest and most precipitous there remained the droppings of the nervous animal that had been urged along the path.
Behind the fall a cave system opened into the rock, a honeycomb of passages, some open to the sky with water pouring through them, others leading downwards into an echoing abyss, others winding through the mountain, wide tunnels along which the icon hunters had dragged and pushed their carts with enormous difficulty, as my companion described it.
I had never known that dreams had such a hard time of it, away in the sleeping mind! We emerged into the eerie silence and heavy resinous air of a pine forest which smothered the hills and the sides of a deep gorge, opening out ahead of us. I could see the gleam of lakes in the far distance. We had left the twilight behind; this was a bright, summer world. Behind us, the waterfall was a dull murmur in the rock, a shadow sound as if it belonged to another place, another dream.
Finebeard was pointing to one of the more distant lakes. I could, I thought, just make out small boats spreading out in a fan from a shoreline settlement, where smoke drifted in the air. He reached into my pack and removed the crude image of Greenface, holding it away from him, indicating the route he was sure she had taken.
There was a confidence about him, a youthful certainty, and although he could scarcely have been out of his teenage years he conveyed an air of direction; he was my guide, I realized, and had been released to the task, perhaps by Garth – or the man who had resembled Garth – or perhaps by my own need, made manifest in the Hinterland, the true starting point for the long search ahead.
Curiouser and curiouser, as Angela would have said.
Taking back the shard, I introduced myself, and Finebeard laughed as he repeated the name ‘Jack’. In his own language, perhaps, the word was scatological. His own name was unpronounceable, a gibberish of several syllables that sounded, when I mumbled it, like William. And William was what I named my guide, and again he chuckled.
It took most of the day to descend the mountain and traverse the pinewoods to the broad blue lake, and the village. There were trails of sorts, spreading out into the land around like the veins of a leaf: passages to other worlds, to other regions, some of them marked with poles or stones, some clearly to be avoided – from William Finebeard’s caution – some familiar to him. Had the icon hunters really hauled their wagons all this way? He indicated that they had. Where they had come from, the mountains on the far side of this community, the terrain was far harder, the valleys deeper. He had joined them a few months ago, when the snow was thick and extra hands were useful for hauling the carts. The icon hunters never rested, never stayed in one place for more than two or three days. Their life was one of constant movement, following the clues and stories that they heard, looking for the religious shrines and sanctuaries which they could loot and use as trade along the way.
My life, even in my dreams, it seemed, was full of sanctuaries. They haunted me.
A deep ditch, filled with a tangle of vicious-looking thorn, was the only barricade around the fishing village. Smoke rose from each of the low houses, and there was a great deal of shouting out on the lake. Several fishing coracles were being paddled to the shore, dragging a wide line-net behind them. The surface of the lake thrashed and sparkled with fish.
A series of weird cries went up suddenly and the lake activity paused for a moment. Two of the bigger boats began to haul for the shore while from the largest of the huts a group of women appeared – the source of the warning – holding bone-tipped harpoons. William called out and waved and the atmosphere of caution changed. A different ululation sounded and the lake activity reverted to the normal task of dragging in the nets.
Two boys carried a wooden plank to the ditch and laid it over the thorn, and we walked carefully across into the community.
I had no idea who these people were. The women wore brightly coloured dresses and shirts, mostly scarlet and yellow. Their hair was tied up on the crown below odd, round hats that were pinned in place. Their skin was creamy white, their eyes very pale. The men wore long buckskin shirts over leather leggings and the same round hats perched on hair that was shaved to the scalp in a wide band from forehead to nape. The left sides of their faces were variously scarred, the older the man the more the cuts. They were almost completely free of familiar jewellery or trinkets – semi-precious stones or painted shells – but rather clattered with fragments of religious painting, metal crosses, sun-circles, stars and gleaming moons, shards of grails, plates, incensories and tabernacles, drilled for the leather strings that slung them from elegant necks. One woman wore the parts of a painted slate diptych slung front and back and tied across her shoulders, a bizarre and heavy garment that showed images of a boy carrying fishes, dancing women with elaborately c
oiffed hair, and long-necked geese, their bodies broken off where the slate was smashed.
We were led to the largest of the houses, to an accompaniment of shrill cries and calls from the men out in the boats. Inside, the floor dropped down, five feet or more below the natural level of the ground. Light streamed from the roof. A fire burned in a recess in the stone wall. We sat on coarsely woven mats and drank a disgusting, syrupy drink, warm and sweet, certainly alcoholic, and I dread to think what else.
Wherever I looked around this lodge, images of gods, goddesses, animals and symbols stared back at me, from simple madonnas on faded canvas to coiled snakes on bark, from elaborate labyrinthine patterns in several colours scratched on polished stone to the stark imagery of Axe or Cross, or severed heads in clay. Candles of all shapes and sizes burned dimly. Like china and pictures in a suburban house, this lodge was decorated with a striking but chaotic jumble of bad and meaningless taste, each item interesting in itself, but without any context save their prettiness and tradable value.
William asked me for the image of Greenface and showed it to the headwoman, who sat chewing by her husband, staring hard at me from eyes set deep in her hard, lined face. She nodded at the image and passed it back, then proffered a wooden bowl full of dried strips of fish. These again were disgusting, but some acid in the leathery flesh made the mouth water. I started to chew and realized that I could never swallow this foul offering; I would be chewing for ever, or so it seemed at the time.
Greenface had been in the area. William already knew this since he and the icon hunters had seen her on their own travels. He learned from the headman, whose name was strange but meant Five Cuts to the Face, that the woman had haunted the rocks and trees above the village for several days. She had frightened the children, but done them no harm. She had stolen fish on two occasions, but on a third had left four crudely carved harpoon hooks, so the theft was adjudged as trade.
The woman had been incomprehensible to them, from the far-away, but a frightened woman nonetheless, and someone in search of a way across the lake.
One evening they had left a small boat outside the thorn hedge that extended into the lake. She had taken it gladly, at dawn the next day, and Five Cuts had watched as she had paddled into the lake glare, soon to be lost from sight.
The headwoman, leaning forward on her knees, the odour of fish rancid on her breath, pointed at my pack, indicated that I should turn it round. As I did so she smiled and held out her hands for the trussed chickens. She was nodding vigorously and I passed them across to her. She snapped their necks with a movement so quick that I missed it, took off the twine and passed it back to me, then called to one of her daughters, three of whom were sitting in the gloom, close to the door and the ramp to the floor. The youngest girl ran over and took the carcases to the fire-side, where she started to pluck them with astonishing speed.
William was still communicating in sign and expression, some words too that perhaps he had picked up on his travels. I gathered that he was asking for a boat to follow Greenface, and after a while he fell silent, hunched forward, waiting for Five Cuts to think.
The old man stared at me then spread his hands. They wanted to trade, of course, and his gaze was on the pack. But I had nothing to trade that I could spare. The chickens were earning us a meal, and probably hospitality, over night. William had nothing but essentials either, and he looked at me rather despairingly, or perhaps hopefully that my own pack would reveal some worthwhile item.
I couldn’t give away the flare gun, or my knives; the sleeping gear was essential, as were the medications, changes of clothes, the photograph of Angela and Natalie. There was nothing of value that I could spare. Unless …
I reached in and drew out one of the pairs of paisley swimming trunks. The bright colours impressed the headwoman. Five Cuts frowned and reached for the garment, studying it before – predictably, I suppose – he put them over his head and looked at me solemnly. I nodded enthusiastically, trying to say, ‘Suits you very well. The headgear of Kings in my world.’
His wife was laughing hysterically. He removed the bathing costume and passed it back, then said something to the woman that again set her off in peals of laughter. She studied each of us in turn, then nodded at William, who shuffled uneasily as Five Cuts rose and indicated that he should follow.
In the corner, by the fire recess, the young girl was chopping the chickens crudely, watching me almost wistfully as the heavy stone knife rose and fell, cutting uncomfortably close to her fingers.
In turn, I was led from the main house to a second, brighter and airier place which was nevertheless overwhelmingly heady with the smell of fat, flesh and furs. The pelts of various animals were pinned out on wooden frames. Two women and a thin-armed youth were at work with bone scrapers, stripping the fatty tissue from the skins prior to curing them. The headwoman gave me a scraper of my own, a block of pumice, showed me briefly what to do and knelt me down at a piece of hide a full six feet by four. As I knelt to the task, she patted my head. As I hesitated – the smell was overpowering – she kicked my backside.
The other three laughed. They were all chewing vigorously – disgusting lumps of a fishy gum – and one of the women reached up and touched the side of her nose, causing her companions to exchange glances and chuckle.
No thanks.
I bent to the task of curing with a vigour that surprised me.
William Finebeard, in the meantime, had been taken over the ditch and up into the woods. His hands were quite raw when he came down for the stew of fish and chicken that was served up about two hours later, as darkness was covering the land. I had by then processed two hides only. He had logged and stripped the bark from two trees. He had then dragged the trees into the village and been shown how to cut the trunks lengthwise, insert stone pegs at hand-width intervals, ready to split the resinous wood into crude planks.
Shortly before we ate, a muscular man with fierce eyes but a ready smile and two cuts on his cheek came into the lodge, kneeling down before the older couple, then joked with them. He was clutching a great bundle of broken bone harpoons and was exhilarated and loud, high on the catch of a fish that looked like a sturgeon, but was five times the size, and ten times as hideous. It was dangling from a gallows in the centre of the village, a focus of much excitement; I’d seen it as I left the curing house.
Two Cuts tossed the broken hooks towards a mat in a corner of the lodge, for later repair, then crouched by the cooking fire for a moment, stirring the stew and talking to the eldest of the three girls.
After a while he came and sat with William and me, taking my companion’s hands in his own and examining the blisters. Whatever he said, it was approving and concerned. He called to the eldest daughter, exercising an authority that suggested he was married to her, then went to his corner, bending to the task of removing the bone blades from the broken hafts of the harpoons.
The older girl came and sat opposite William, rubbing oil and ash of some sort into the blisters. She was called Ethne and her eyes sparkled as she worked on the wounds, speaking quietly and I felt wryly, since William smiled and laughed with her.
Her young sister – Thimuth – came over to me and took my hands, her own eyes shining with energy and excitement. She could have been no more than twelve or thirteen, precocious and lively, the touch of her hands on mine signalling more than soothing. But Five Cuts spoke to her sharply and she drew away, scowling and disappointed, spitting into her hat before placing it back on her head and sulking back to the cooking fire and the stone pot with its simmering, smelly soup.
We sat in a circle to eat, and William and I were encouraged to fill our bellies. In truth, the mix of fish and chicken was tasty and I was soon full and feeling tired.
By firelight, later, I watched Two Cuts back at work in his corner, the headwoman sitting and talking with her middle daughter, who was stitching cloth, and Thimuth curled into a tight ball below a blanket, watching me. Ethne was still working on William?
??s sore hands, and talking quietly. Five Cuts himself sat staring at me curiously. When I met his gaze he frowned, glanced at my companion, then back again.
Slowly he shook his head, a clear warning.
Now something became clear to me which should have been obvious all along. There was more than soothing going on between William and the eldest daughter. With everything except language – they were contriving to sound innocent – they were loving each other, sharing their souls! No wonder William had been so willing to come back. These two were not strangers to each other by any stretch of the imagination. My friend’s attention was half on the harpoon mender, sitting in the gloom, and half on the beauty who sat before him, and affection and desire flowed between them as tangible as a scented summer breeze.
You young rogue, you …
The clutch of harpoons was repaired and Two Cuts ceremonially presented them to the Headman and his wife. He went outside with Ethne, then – they were clearly betrothed – and William spent a long time scratching at the ground with a stick. Ethne didn’t return; she lived in the lodge during the day, but slept elsewhere.
* * *
We were both exhausted and I was glad when blankets of animal skins were brought to us and I could entertain sleep, disturbed only by the sound of constant chewing, and by my friend, in the very small hours, who rose beside me, indicated graphically that he needed to urinate before slipping from the house. He didn’t come back, and at first light I saw him at the lake edge, staring across the water.
I had certainly hoped that our efforts of the day before would have been sufficient to earn the transport across the lake, but the headwoman worked us a further full day, mercifully releasing me from curing duties after a few hours and setting me to splitting logs. William was raw-handed but exuberant in the evening, and we were presented with three long harpoons, a warbling whistle, and a pound of fish-gum, which I held to my bosom with exaggerated pleasure as I thanked them profusely.