Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [26]
No words were spoken between Hwll and Akun on the subject but both of them knew what must happen.
Two days after the death of Tep, Akun herself strode down the hill to the camp by the river and brought the family there up to her own camp on the hill. There, forty paces along the slope, they set to work to build a new shelter: it consisted of two parts, one for Ulla and one for her children.
Ulla said nothing. It was hard to know whether she was frightened by the loss of her protector or glad that Tep, who had always bullied her, was gone. In any case, her new status was uncomplicated: she and her children were now under Hwll’s protection. Akun inspected the girl carefully while they built her new home. She was a stringy, unsatisfactory creature used to being treated as a workhorse by Tep. But she had survived, if nothing else, and Akun had no doubt that she would have more children.
She explained the matter to Ulla simply and succinctly:
“Hwll will be your man now; we shall both be his women. But I am the senior woman and you will obey me.”
Ulla said nothing, but made a token nod of submission. For many years she had learned how to submit.
It was Hwll who was most affected by the change. Akun had been his woman for many years and when he thought of a woman, it was she alone who came into his mind. Now all was to be changed and it gave him a profound sense of unease.
While the two women prepared Ulla’s new home, the hunter went off alone. He was gone several days and when he returned, he said nothing about his absence, but moved quietly about the camp with a new look of satisfaction on his face.
During his time away, he had wandered along the valley to the west. Some miles away he had often noticed an unusual slope above the river. There, instead of the usual chalk, the ground exposed a long rib of soft grey rock with a wonderful texture and colour, quite unlike anything else in that area. He had passed it many times and noticed the curious grey light it seemed to return when the sun struck it. The only stone that he had any use for was flint, and so he had passed by the grey stone without giving it much thought. But now, in this crisis in his life, a strange new idea had formed in his mind.
At the rockface he had searched the ground for some time, picking up lumps of stone and discarding them, until finally, with a grunt of satisfaction, he found what he was looking for. It was a lump about the size of his fist, oval in shape and smooth to the touch. The stone was not hard, and settling down on his haunches beside an oak tree, he began to work it with a flint.
That night he stayed by the grey rockface, and the next day he strode up to the high ground he loved. All the time he worked the stone, hardly pausing. Several times he washed it in a stream, and by the end of the second day he had begun to polish it. On the third day, his work was finished, and putting the stone in a pouch, he went back to the camp on the hill.
The figure that he had so painstakingly carved was remarkable. It resembled a short, squat female torso and head. The face was indicated by a ridge for the nose and three little holes for eyes and mouth. It was crude. And yet, taken as a whole it had an extraordinary beauty: for this primitive little sculpture was nothing less than Akun herself; the heavy, full breasts, the rounded, fertile stomach and hips, the big, muscular buttocks – it was the essence of his woman that the hunter had created, and he stroked the little figure lovingly.
What had possessed him to carve in stone? He could not say. Something about the feel of it, the way it caught the light, the wonderful heaviness of it had taken his fancy. Perhaps the challenge of the thing. At all events, he was pleased with it. Akun was fertile, the mother of his children. She was everything that he knew about a woman; and the curious little figure,