Hawaii - James Michener [14]
"I suppose he was preparing for the convocation."
"No. That must have been decided many days earlier. To permit canoes from Tahiti and Moorea to return to Havaiki by tomorrow. Last year a woman from Havaiki confided to me that the priests there consider our High Priest the ablest of all, and they plan to promote him to some position of prominence."
"I wish they would," Teroro grumbled. "Get him off this island."
"But they wouldn't dare make him paramount priest so long as his own island is not completely won over."
As Marama talked, her husband began to pick up a thread of importance, which often occurred when the wise moon-faced woman spoke, and he leaned forward on the log to listen. She continued: "It seems to me that the High Priest will have to do everything possible in this convocation to prove to the priests of Havaiki that he is more devoted to Oro than they."
"In order to make himself eligible for promotion?" Teroro asked.
"He must."
"What do you think he will do?" Teroro asked.
Marama hesitated to utter the words, and at that moment an unexpected wind blew across the lagoon and threw small waves at her feet. She drew her toes from the lagoon and dried them with her hands, still not speaking, so Teroro continued her thought: "You think that to impress others, the High Priest will sacrifice the king?"
"No," Marama corrected. "It is your feet he will place upon the rainbow."
Teroro reached up and tugged at the tip of a breadfruit leaf and asked thoughtfully, "Will the killing then stop?"
"No," his wife replied gravely, "it will go on until all your friends have left the lagoon. Only then will Bora Bora be safe for Oro."
"Men like Mato and Pa?"
"They are doomed," Marama said.
"But you think not the king?"
"No, the queenly young woman reasoned. "Your brother is well loved by the kings of Tahiti and Moorea, and such a bold step might turn not only those kings but people in general against the new god."
"But offering me to Oro would be permitted?" Teroro pursued.
"Yes. Kings are always willing to believe the worst of younger brothers."
Teroro turned on the log to study his beautiful wife and thought to himself: "I don't appreciate her good sense. She's a lot like her father." Aloud he said, "I hadn't reasoned it out the way you have, Marama. All I knew was that this time there was special danger."
"It is because you, the brother of the king, still worship Tane,"
"Only in my heart do I do that."
"But if I can read your heart," Marama said, "so can the priests."
Teroro's comment on this was forestalled by an agitated messenger, his arm banded by a circle of yellow feathers to indicate that he belonged to the king. "We have been looking for you," he told Teroro. "I've been studying the canoe," the young chief growled. "The king wants you."
Teroro rose from the log, banged his feet on the grass to knock away the water, and nodded an impersonal farewell to his wife. Following the messenger, he reported to the palace, a large, low building held up by coconut-tree pillars, each carved with figures of gods and highly polished so that white flecks in the wood gleamed. The roof consisted of plaited palm fronds, and there were no floors or windows or side walls, just rolled-up lengths of matting which could be dropped for either secrecy or protection from rain. The principal room contained many signs of royalty: feather gods, carved shark's teeth, and huge Tridacna shells from the south. The building had two beautiful features: it overlooked the lagoon, on whose outer reef high clouds of spray broke constantly; and all parts of the structure were held together by thin, strong strands of golden brown sennit, the marvelous island rope woven from fibers that filled the husks of coconuts. Nearly two miles of it had been used in construction; wherever one piece of timber touched another, pliant golden sennit held the parts together. A man could sit in a room tied with sennit and revel in its intricate